


laws of attraction

by qunsio, stuckypocketguide (PocketGuideTyrant)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern: No Powers, Friends to Lovers, Lack of Communication, Multi, Polyamory, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-27
Updated: 2017-06-28
Packaged: 2018-11-18 21:20:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 23,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11299059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qunsio/pseuds/qunsio, https://archiveofourown.org/users/PocketGuideTyrant/pseuds/stuckypocketguide
Summary: Even though night has settled in, it’s balmy, hot, humid; sweat sticks their clothes to their bodies, their hair to their necks. Peggy leans up over the two of them, looking slightly fuzzy from champagne. Bucky leans up too. Steve stays where he is, flat on the ground between them. He finds he doesn’t mind their shadowed, looming faces.Peggy, biting her thumbnail, says to Bucky, “You should kiss him.”---In which Steve spends his days protesting, working a minimum wage job, and trying to make a buck by reporting. That is, until he gets scooped up by his lawyer, a Ms. Margaret Carter, Esq. Things get more complicated from there.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i'd like to thank stuckypocketguide for helping me work the kinks out of this fic! none of this would exist without their guidance and their gorgeous, gorgeous art.

“I can’t believe you got fucking arrested,” Bucky says, pilfering a chip from Steve’s plate. “ _ Again. _ ”

“It’s not that hard to believe,” Steve grumbles. 

Bucky knows Steve can’t just sit around and pull double-shifts at the café when any random clip of the morning news is enough to blow a hollow into his stomach. There have been protests almost every weekend downtown, and Steve, always eager to run towards pyres, has been out on the streets just as often. When so many people are out doing the same, he has no right to do anything but burn alongside them. 

Even if that means getting arrested. Again.

And maybe, because of that, he’s been sleeping less, spending nights reading anything and everything to try to make sense of the new world unfolding before him; he’s submitting article after article to  _ Slate _ and  _ Jezebel _ and anyone that’ll listen, like he has been for almost a year now, only now more urgently. And he’s out on the streets during the day too, staying out until nightfall every weekend, dropping shifts to keep the fire going, dropping meals to keep his budget balanced. 

Now that his recklessness has landed him 19 sleepless hours in jail, it’s catching up to him. After weeks of undereating, and after the stale cheese sandwich he forced down his throat just four hours ago, the plate Bucky lays before him, containing a neat little row of tacos and a pile of chips, sets his stomach churning.

“I can’t believe you got arrested  _ without me _ ,” Bucky says, louder now. “Again!” He says it lightly, but the strange twist of his mouth suggests he’s trying to get at something serious. For someone who got to sleep in his own bed last night, Bucky looks exhausted, cheeks sallow and stubble unkempt. Bucky tacks on, “You’re okay though, right?”

He’s been worried. Steve rolls his eyes. “Don’t be so dramatic, I’m fine. Eat your damn taco.”

Bucky leans in to eat his damn taco, but then his head perks up like a bird’s. His eyes trace the path from the door to the cashier. In his distraction, pork and salsa spill out from his careless fingers. “Well hello,” he croons, leaning back in his chair, fingers still awkwardly curled around his food. He lifts his chin, casual. 

Steve knows Bucky’s turn-and-stares too well at this point. He glances over his shoulder, expecting a dark-haired girl, at least 5’5”, maybe a bit out of Bucky’s league. And, well, Steve’s not wrong. Only a few feet away from them stands the lawyer from his arraignment a few hours ago. Wearing the same pencil skirt, cleanly cinched at the waist, dark hair falling in smooth waves over her cream-colored blouse, and her blazer cutting sharp corners at her shoulders— all of it is  _ absolutely _ out of Bucky’s league. She’s reading a menu as she walks, and her neat black heels cause her footsteps to ring out, even in the clamorous taco bar. 

Bucky’s got an all-too eager look on his face, and Steve feels a pit of nerves lodge in his chest.

She looks up suddenly, directly at Steve. 

Steve blurts, “Evening, ma’am.” Bucky’s eyes widen in delight. Steve  _ never _ initiates these conversations.

And for good reason, apparently. Despite their previous introduction, she squints at him. “Hello.”

“How—how are you?”

“Fine,” she says warily.

“Good, good. Thanks for— uh. For your help.” Steve’s ears heat up. Without looking back, he can feel the bite of Bucky’s growing smirk. Bucky takes incredible joy in watching him flounder in front of beautiful women. Steve turns, whispers fiercely to Bucky, “She was my lawyer.”

When he turns back, her face has relaxed. “Ah, yes, hello again. Good to see you are well,” she says to Steve. She nods to Bucky. “Good evening.”

“Hey,” Bucky says, and he rolls forward in his seat, leans on his elbows on the table, the edges of his mouth quirking up. “Do you wanna sit? We’ll buy you a thank-you margarita.”

She glances at her watch, and Steve kicks Bucky under the table. Bucky is an enduring optimist when it comes to the affection of strange women.

“How about a pint?” she asks, shifting her purse to her other shoulder.

Bucky’s face brightens. He swings up from the table, sauntering over to the lawyer to lead her back to the cashier. “Hell, you broke Stevie out of jail,” he says, “we’ll get you a pitcher.”

Steve laughs, taken aback.

At the cash register, she and Bucky huddle around a laminated beer menu. Bucky’s body curves around her, like a sheet draped artfully over one of her shoulders, and there’s a warm glow from the cheap light bulbs above them. When Bucky shoots Steve a conspiratorial wink over his shoulder, Steve can’t help the warmth that stutters up in his chest.

The lawyer though, unaffected by Bucky’s charm, just arches a finely drawn eyebrow at Bucky. Only the hint of a smile tugs at the corner of her mouth, now and then, suggesting an inkling of affection. Exactly Bucky’s type. They look good together, Steve thinks.

They settle back into the table soon enough, food and beer in hand, and they both look to Steve. Steve, glancing quickly between their expectant faces, stutters, “You— you come here often?”

Bucky’s eyebrows shoot up, and his lips thin as he tries to keep in his laughter.

The lawyer smirks, lips red as a punch to the gut.  “I do actually. It’s quite near the courthouse, which almost certainly guided your decision as well?”

“She’s sharp,” Bucky manages to bite out.

“Peggy, by the way” she says, holding out her hand. 

“James,” Bucky says, and now Steve’s eyebrows rise. Bucky offers a guiltless shrug and shakes Peggy’s hand.

Turning to Steve, she says “Rogers, yes?”

“Yeah. Steve.”

Her hand is warm when she takes his.

“A pleasure,” she says.

They pour the beer, topping each other off through one refill and another, until they can’t quite keep track of who’s had how much. Peggy, pinching a dripping burrito between her slim fingers, tells them about her work—nothing current, which is of course, “privileged information”—but she tells them about the grittiest work of the most glamorous cases she’s been a part of, about espionage and cyberattacks, about blackmail and bribery. Even putting aside the sensational stories, Steve finds her work to be remarkable, with far-reaching effects. She’s remarkable, too, firm and eloquent despite the flush in her cheeks and the beers she’s knocked back.

Steve can tell Bucky is smitten too, even if isn’t as visibly slack-jawed as Steve is. Bucky eggs her on, asks insightful questions, never redirecting the conversation to her lovely eyes or her trim waist or the clean sheets he’s got at home calling her name. He only leans in, his chin resting on his hand, his lower lip between his teeth.

It grows comfortable. Eventually, Steve even makes a few jokes that aren’t entirely embarrassing, and Peggy laughs, not the reserved smirk she offered before, but something loud and genuine. Bucky kicks him eagerly under the table when Steve first makes her laugh like that. Steve’s drunk enough to be pleased about it all, even Bucky’s aggressive bid for attention; he hopes it’ll bruise, so Bucky’ll notice it later and get that charming little worried crease between his brows.

Then, well after it’s gone dark out, Peggy’s phone pings three times in quick succession. She frowns into the glow of her screen. “I’ve got to go back to the office,” she says.

“You’re drunk,” Steve reminds her.

As if to prove it, she wobbles in place as she stands. “Still a sight more competent than any of my colleagues.” She burps and laughs a bit. “Don’t tell them I said that.”

“You should stay,” Bucky tries, even as she begins to put on her coat. “You’ve done enough today.”

Scrolling through her phone still, she says, “My assistant has gone part-time and the temp types slower than my grandfather’s grandfather. There’s a lot to do.” Her face is tired in a way Steve hasn’t seen it all day; even in court she had a radiance about her.

“I can type,” Steve slurs without thinking. “And I’d work  _ so  _ hard for you.”

She grins, flips her hair out of her coat. “I might take you up on that Rogers,” she says. “Good evening, gentlemen.” Then she turns on her heel and walks crisply out of the taco bar.

Bucky, slow-moving from the easy atmosphere and the beer, catches up to what Steve just said only after Peggy leaves. He rocks in his chair, laughter bubbling madly out of him, his fist pounding the table.

“You’re a jerk,” Steve says, cheeks burning.

“Come on ladykiller,” he wheezes, tears in his eyes. “I’ll buy you a beer, too.”

“I hate you,” Steve replies, but he accepts Bucky’s beer anyway.

\---

Steve gets to see Peggy in court when he comes in the next morning, as required. She stands straight-backed, certain, while he stoops, red-eyed and slightly hungover. Within the hour, he’s cleared of all charges, and he sees her shift his file to the bottom of a rather large stack. On his way out, he nods to her, and he holds in a breath when she nods back.

“If you have a moment,” she says to him while he’s stuffing his papers into his rain-damp backpack, “I’d like to have a chat. I can meet you outside on the steps as soon as I finish here.”

Steve agrees, dumbfounded.

Cool mist prickles his face as he waits on the steps out front. His stomach grumbles. He can see the taco bar across the street, but he probably can’t afford to eat out again so soon. When he budgeted this week out, he’d planned on eating pastries at work today, but he had to skip his shift for court, unsure of how long it would take, and now his stomach is empty and his bank account can’t have more than $18. 

His eyes roll up to focus on the low-lying clouds while he calculates: rent isn’t due for another three weeks, and he’ll get one paycheck between now and then, and the payment for his latest  _ Broadly  _ article is still scheduled to come through. If he wants to skip work on Friday to interview some of the organizers at Georgetown, it’s not going to balance out. Maybe if he picks up an extra shift on Saturday—

“Steve,” a voice interrupts. 

He turns, cranes his neck to look up at Peggy.

Peggy asks, “Were you serious about working for me?”

He scrambles to stand. “Uh—yeah. If you’d have me.” 

“Thought as much. I’ve already performed a basic background check, as part of our work here,” she says, nodding to the courthouse. She holds a card in front of him. “Here’s the address, my phone number. No need to wear a tie, but you must wear a sport jacket or a blazer of some sort. If you can, come tomorrow. If not, call during my business hours. We’ll work out the details later. All right?”

Steve takes the card. “Uh,” he says. Belatedly, he nods.

“Welcome aboard,” she says. With that, she pops open her umbrella and descends the staircase.

\---

So, in an disbelieving haze, Steve quits his old job. He was a shitty barista anyway, and always a little too headstrong with impatient customers. And with impatient coworkers. And with management. So maybe it’s for the best.

Bucky, who has never held a desk job for longer than a year, is unconcerned by this sudden switch. “About time,” he says, grinning and shoving at Steve’s shoulder. “Knew you could do better than that place.”

Bucky drags him out to celebrate, to some outdoor festival with a couple of girls Bucky met—literally—on the side of the street back when he was working construction for a month. It’s a Tuesday night, so the streets are busy but not packed, and as Steve trails behind Bucky and the girls floating from stall to stall, he has the presence of mind to keep track of their expenditures. 

They stop for a moment at picnic table in the middle of a ring of food stalls. Distracted and uneasy, Steve lets his mind wander from the conversation. It feels suspiciously easy to uproot himself like this, and Bucky’s easy acquiescence did nothing to soothe his concerns. A hundred uncertainties rattle around his head. He almost says something about it to Bucky when they’re alone for a moment, waiting for the girls to return from the restroom. Bucky turns towards him with a quiet, unpretentious smile. The harsh, white lighting brings out the pink in his cheeks. Steve can’t bring himself to heap his worries onto him. He smiles back.

\---

The next morning, Steve wakes in a fit of anxiety. He throws on his only suit, runs his fingers through his hair in front of the bathroom mirror and decides: this is  _ stupid _ . He goes to Bucky’s room to frown at himself in the full-length mirror. His arms look too short for his jacket and his bony ankles stick out from the hem of his pants. He guesses maybe it’s good that he has grown a little since he last wore the suit, but with the poor fit, he looks like he’s on his way to his own bar mitzvah rather than to a new job.

Bucky leans up on his elbows, watching groggily from his bed as Steve fidgets in front of the mirror. 

“C’mere,” Bucky slurs.

Steve goes.

“Hands,” Bucky says, articulate as ever this early in the morning.

Steve sighs and offers his hands.

Bucky runs his rough fingers along Steve’s wrist. Goosebumps rise in the wake of his touch. Bucky tugs at Steve’s dress shirt underneath the sleeve of Steve’s jacket, pulls the white sleeves so they stick out a little, and makes it even all around. When he’s finished, he holds each of Steve’s hands in one of his. His thumbs rub unconscious circles over the back of Steve’s hands as he evaluates his work. Steves exhales, shoulders dropping, anxiety seeping out of him like air out of a balloon.

Bucky nods at last, and leans forward to pull open a drawer beneath his bed. It hits Steve in the shin. Bucky grasps Steve’s knee in apology while he digs through his random junk drawer. Having found whatever it is he sought, Bucky tosses his head back and shimmies backwards on the bed, patting at the newly vacant space. Bucky’s sleep-mussed hair bounces as he moves, and Steve watches, a little too raptly, then takes a seat.

Bucky flicks his hands towards Steve’s feet, until Steve brings them up onto the bed. He yanks Steve’s socks off, and slides his own on Steve’s feet instead. The socks are black, made of an expensive feeling fabric, and they end far past Steve’s ankle.

Bucky pats his ankle. “Thought these’d fit all right.”

Steve rolls his eyes. Who thinks about the fit of a pair of socks?

“Tuck your shirt in and you might even pass for respectable,” Bucky says. He pats Steve twice on the shoulder, then turns over in bed to go back to sleep.

Steve tucks his shirt in as he ambles towards the mirror, and is surprised by the change. His sleeves are still too long, but they don’t look absurdly so anymore, and the poor fit of his pants are somewhat disguised by the dark socks. Steve turns, gives himself an over the shoulder look. Not too bad. 

Well. No use waiting around. With a parting look to Bucky’s already sleeping form, Steve throws his shoulders back and heads out.


	2. Chapter 2

Steve is used to coming into work in the morning to the muted clammer of dishes sifting through sink water, the hiss of steam, and the clunk of the cash register. Stepping out of the elevator into Peggy’s office, though, he hears mostly loud, expensive footsteps as people parade about, or sitting in high-backed office chairs, shouting to each other from across the office and scribbling meaningfully between long bouts of glaring at their papers. 

Steve, rocking a little on his feet and clutching the same backpack he’s had since high school, certainly stands out among them, all tall and slick and moneyed, but everyone is so deeply immersed in their own spheres that he hardly makes any impression at all.

Peggy’s current assistant, who is hugely pregnant, comes up to him. She introduces herself as Colleen, eyes him with open skepticism, and before he can introduce himself, she jerks her head in one direction and walks off.

Under Colleen’s guidance, he hits the ground  _ sprinting _ . Moments after he sets his bag down, he’s scrambling around in the cramped annex outside of Peggy’s office, trying to organize Peggy’s notes and Colleen’s notes and his notes on a wide, dark oak desk he shares with Colleen. Within the first hour and a half, fumbles through phone calls with clients and fields visits from the other attorneys, who mostly don’t care to introduce themselves and often act like they’re owed his time.

The annex is too cramped with two people, so before the end of the week he and Colleen move to the more spacious kitchen area, with their notes spread across the gleaming countertop and at least a dozen tabs of LexisNexis open on each of their screens. Peggy wanders in and out, refilling her mug and checking their notes. Steve brews gallon after gallon of coffee, liter after liter of tea. Steve takes notes as Colleen directs him too, and then rewrites those notes when he’s told they are “too editorial.”

“You’re a writer, aren’t you?” Colleen demands after scoring long red lines through his work yet again.

“Sort of,” Steve says on a sigh. He’s hardly had any time to work on a story since he began here, too mentally overloaded at the end of each day to even think about going out for interviews or sitting down to write. If he were still back at the coffee shop, he’d have finished his Georgetown piece  _ and _ his JCC piece by now, he thinks ruefully.

Colleen shrugs. “Leave it at the door.”

He does a lot of good work, judging by Peggy’s pleased grin as she thumbs through his reports at the end of the day. And based on the prolonged, inquisitive looks the other attorneys start to give him, he’s beginning to make waves in the firm as well.

The first couple weeks, he comes home exhausted in a way a double-shift at the cafe never made him. His weekends seem to happen in slow motion, after the frenetic juggernaut of his workweek. The fourth Friday evening after beginning at the firm finds Steve slung across the couch, too tired to eat, too hungry to sleep, just enough energy to dick around on his phone. In some distant part of the apartment, Bucky slides something into the oven. Steve gets a ping from his bank account alerting him to suspicious activity.

“Shit,” he says, sitting up quickly.

“What is it?” Bucky calls from the other room.

“I think my card got stolen again.”

Bucky comes around the corner, wiping his hands with a dish towel. “I keep telling you man, you have got to beef up your laptop’s defenses if you—” he cuts himself off with a low whistle when Steve opens the account. 

It’s a direct deposit larger than any balance he’s ever had in this account. Steve literally feels his heart stutter, and feels a bit embarrassed by that after. Bucky’s always been the breadwinner. Even when Bucky was between his various desk jobs, he was strong enough to pick up high-paying physical labor and skilled enough to pull tech temp jobs, and now, thanks to a few convenient connections, he’s got a steady flow of freelance IT work. He covers groceries more often than not, shreds the receipts before Steve can see them. Now, looking at his bank account, Steve imagines the bills he can pay for the two of them. He can’t say he’s displeased with this reversal.

“We,” Bucky announces, “should celebrate.”

“You always want to celebrate,” Steve says, but he’s inclined to agree. 

\---

Celebration means bowling, the very next afternoon. Steve, despite his relatively weak wrists and poor hand-eye coordination, is an excellent bowler, and Bucky, of course, is an excellent day-drinker. It’s a win-win. 

It’s not exactly a pleasant place, Steve is reminded as he leans down to tie his laces, his nose burning from the stale shoes and the sharp antiseptic smell of aluminum surfaces wiped clean too many times. The alley, dingy and old and poorly sound-proofed, echos with the sounds of clattering enamel, but the shoes, the smells, the faces, the sticky surface of the bar— they’re familiar and well-loved. And the swell of Bucky’s arms as he hefts bowling balls around, that’s, uh, that’s familiar too. 

Steve’s got his nose in his flimsy plastic cup of beer when he sees a dissonantly familiar head of auburn hair approaching him. He sets the cup down, drags the back of his hand across his mouth and gapes at  _ Peggy  _ walking towards him. She’s smiling, her lipstick as deep and dark as her loose, cherry-red blouse, tied off at her waist. And she’s wearing jeans.  _ JEANS _ . Stunningly casual. Or casually stunning? Either way, it shakes Steve to his core. He sees her all the time in form-fitting dresses, straight skirts and straighter jackets, but this, this is entirely new. The jeans are faded, and either in need of patching or artfully distressed, and when she sits down in the sickly orange chair across from Steve, the flesh of her thigh pushes through the hole in her jeans and her skin looks so startlingly, invitingly soft.

When he’s finally able to meet her eye, she smirks. “Hey,” he says suavely. 

“Hello,” she says. “I was told we’re here to celebrate.”

“Peggy!” Bucky calls out. “You made it! I’ll get you a beer. Steve, write her in. Peg, find yourself a ball.”

“I’ve never been bowling before,” she says, slotting her long fingers into a bowling ball. “Is there more to it than ‘throw ball at pins?’”

Steve shrugs. “That’s the gist of it. I can give you some tips if you’d like.”

“We’ll see,” she says.

She turns out to be good at it, naturally. She’s the first real competition Steve’s faced in a while, and it doesn’t help that she, like Bucky, is so smooth and graceful. They glide over to their lane in their faded bowling shoes, walking on air even weighted down by a fifteen-pound dumbbell, and their arms circle in smooth arcs towards the pins. 

Steve, perhaps a bit distracted, loses. Badly. Seeing Peggy cocky and triumphant, and seeing Bucky staring in admiration, Steve finds he doesn’t mind.

\---

The following week, Peggy begins to take Steve on excursions in the evenings, leaving a physically exhausted Colleen to finish up at the office. Steve and Peggy go to community centers and gyms and high schools and parks and housing complexes and they find the people who can jump on the class action cases they’re building. It’s the part of the work he later decides that he likes best—talking to people, finding little points of connection, making silly jokes for their kids. He’s good at that part; it’s what made his articles shine. 

A firm believer in learning on the job, Peggy hands Steve the reins from the beginning, and Steve, nervous under Peggy’s watchful eye, blusters through the first few. Over the course of talking to eight people, he receives invitations to a community barbeque, a baby shower, and a divorce party, on top of three standing invitations to hang out again, but none of the people he spoke to were willing to make statements until Peggy stepped into the conversation.

“When you want to have it, you have a disarming presence,” Peggy observes as she and Steve walk back to the office. “People want to trust you.”

Steve avoids eye contact, frustrated by his string of failures. “Then why don’t they let me take their statements?”

“You’re soliciting aid, Rogers. You must make it clear that you actually need help,” she says gently. “It’s not always necessary, or even useful, to be the strong macho man.”

Steve frowns at the sidewalk, trying to digest both the most flattering compliment and the most biting criticism that he has ever received from Peggy. He knows he’s good at disarming people, it’s how he coaxes their stories from them, but he rankles at the idea of sacrificing his strength for someone else’s comfort.  Regardless, he’ll do better next time.

\---

Steve starts joining Peggy at a local free clinic every Friday after lunch as well. They set up in a small meeting room in the back of the office, and they assist a revolving door of clients with immigration paperwork, landlord negligence, worker’s comp claims, domestic violence cases, on and on. Those with the potential for a class action case can sign on to the firm to receive pro bono representation from one of the senior attorneys, Peggy included, which is the official object of Peggy’s visits here. Any other task is up to Peggy’s discretion.

“My experience is limited,” Peggy explains after assisting their third green card applicant of the day. “Beyond my work with the firm, I can only really help with paperwork.”

Caught off guard by the bashful nature of the comment, Steve laughs. 

She’s incredible with the clients, at once sharp and gentle, and he sees now what she means about ceding strength, allowing others to feel stronger from your presence. She doesn’t try to shield them, or at least she doesn’t shield by holding firm or bashing through, the way that Steve does in his most indulgent fantasies; she’s honest and sure, allows them to soak up her confidence. Steve sits at her side and takes notes, for Peggy, for himself, for a future article, maybe. His hand stiffens after the first ten minutes, but he doesn’t stop writing; it all seems important. 

They keep at it until late, only getting back to the firm at 8 or 9. There’s still work to do for paying clients, so despite the late hour, Steve makes coffee, and Peggy brings their files out to the kitchen. They sit on the lumpy plastic stools lining the countertops, and they work, munching their way through a horrifically large bag of almonds. 

Around 10, Peggy tries to wave him out of the office. “Go on, I’ll finish up,” she says, and Steve agrees to leave, but he sits and works for another half hour before Peggy notices. She physically pushes him to the elevator then, saying, “I can only pay you so much overtime, you know.” 

Steve catches a late-night bus, hoping the coffee jitters will keep him awake until his stop. It’s almost midnight when he sneaks into the pitch dark apartment. He’s too wired to sleep, even though he knows he should. He knocks his knees and ankles against every piece of furniture on his way to bed, but Bucky doesn’t stir. Luckily.


	3. Chapter 3

“You, me, and Lucy and Dana. Shakespeare in the park,” Bucky says to Steve when Steve emerges from his bedroom the next morning. Bucky stands before the stove gloriously undressed, just low-slung sweatpants hanging off his hips. There’s a hickey in the divot between his hipbone and his stomach, and Steve does his very best not to stare too openly at it.

Steve’s always held an objective appreciation for Bucky’s good looks. Nothing personal or obsessive. Closer to how one admires a piece of art. And it’s an admiration that’s been continually verified by the revolving door of boys and girls that Bucky leads into his bedroom. Steve assumes it’s natural, nigh unavoidable, to feel _something_ when confronted with Bucky, all broad shoulders and easy confidence.

“What do you think?” Bucky asks, shaking Steve from his reverie.

“Didn’t know you were a Shakespeare man,” Steve says.

“Pfft.” Bucky scrapes his spatula against the pan. “They’re only playing _Taming of the Shrew_ anyway. We’ll just set up some blankets and make out probably.”

Steve spends a bleary moment trying to imagine that—sprawling across a blanket with Bucky, laid back on a sparse lawn with the root of a tree digging into the space between his shoulder blades, quiet in the darkness and among dozens of similar couples.

Then he remembers: Lucy and Dana, he said.

Steve coughs. “I was going to head to the JCC, actually,” he says, even though he’s fairly certain he’ll be finished with that before the play begins. He doesn’t even think the JCC will be open much past sundown tonight.

But Bucky doesn’t point that out. He ambles over, pushes some eggs onto Steve’s plate. “Cooking up another story?”

“Yeah,” Steve says. “You’re welcome to—”

“S’alright,” Bucky says. “More for me.”

\---

Steve goes to court in the sixth week, just him and Peggy. Colleen mans the desk at the office, and Steve gets to watch Peggy string together a formidable class action case against a landlord whose negligence led to a vicious outbreak of toxic black mold on several of his properties. As she stalks around her courtroom, she has an easy, shining confidence about her, and he can see the jury falling in love, in a way, one by one.

The landlord never stood a chance.

At the end of the week, when they walk back into the office after their win, Colleen catches them in the kitchen and has them recount the highlights.

“Shouldn’t we—?” Steve asks, gesturing to Peggy’s office.

Colleen quirks an eyebrow and asks Peggy another question, unmoved, so they stay in the common area.

Sitting at the counter, Steve doesn’t miss the sly glances from the numerous attorneys and assistants who are passing by, each spending a little too long digging through the fridge. Nor does he miss the way Peggy and Colleen both seem a little too ignorant of them.

Once the gossip is set to circulate, they go back to Peggy’s office. With a smile, Peggy presents Steve with the chance to sign on permanently.

“On the condition that you do not get arrested again,” she says with a smirk.

Steve scoffs. As if he’d have time to get arrested with his schedule now.

The pay is, frankly, staggering. Nearly twice what he’s making as a temp, which is already many times over what he made at the café. He’s afraid there’s been a typo, but Peggy reads it over with him and doesn’t stutter when she reads the figure. Peggy ignores his plainly shocked face, lets him collect himself before she moves on. Steve returns her smile and decides never to work anywhere else again.

\---

The next months test his decision.

“Watch out,” Colleen says, one of her last pieces of advice before she departs. “They don’t like us.”

Peggy and Steve are in the middle of a senior meeting, Steve’s first. Peggy, the other senior attorneys, and the partners are all seated around a rich maple-wood table, each with their assistants sitting nearby. Steve realizes: there are a lot of men here. The office as a whole is fairly balanced, with the junior attorneys, paralegals, assistants, so on, but here among the top brass, it’s all men. Peggy seems to notice when the realization hits Steve, and she answers his shocked sweep of the room with a subtle twitch of her eyebrow.

During these meetings, Steve becomes very familiar with the minutiae Peggy’s facial twitches. Every week there’s something new to react to. A racy comment about a new junior attorney has Peggy baring her teeth for just a fraction of a moment. Lenihan mentions that they might not want "naturalized citizens” working on a particular case, and Peggy’s lips thin, slightly, before she interrupts and redirects the conversation. A bathroom break turned smoke break turned coffee break that leaves Steve, Peggy, and the assistants waiting in the conference room for almost half an hour leads to periodic jaw clenches, which cause Steve to rub the hollow of his cheek sympathetically.

Steve sends Peggy a text during the meeting. Simply, “I hate this.”

Peggy’s reply is immediate: “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

The senior attorneys, they don’t just target Peggy, Steve finds out. Now that Colleen’s gone and Steve’s alone in the alcove before Peggy’s office, the attorneys start circling by his desk more often. Some things the men have in common. They come in, with their coiffed hair just so, and plant one hand against Steve’s desk. They stand facing away from him, holding something in their other hand—a half-eaten apple, a Rolex, car keys, and, on one memorable occasion, a wad of cash. Steve almost feels embarrassed for them. But all of them at some point solicit sexual services. Of Steve, or of Peggy. He shoots back bare-faced dismissals, and, when those don’t work, straight up insults.

And the problem is, in the moment, Steve’s livid, but the attorneys are so drippingly charismatic, artfully manipulative that when it’s over, Steve can almost convince himself that he imagined it, that a request for a private dinner meeting could just be a request for a private dinner meeting.

He tells Peggy about it, and she sighs, crumpling over her desk.  “I’d hoped that they wouldn’t, with you,” she says, her voice strained. “But of course not.”

“What do we do?”

“We work,” she says tiredly. “We win.”

She looks so bitter and tired that Steve almost doesn’t want to fight her. Almost. He snaps, “ _What?_ So we do _nothing_?”

“There is no avenue for me that doesn’t force me to cede ground.”

“They’re disrespecting you!”

She stands suddenly, shoots back, “They’re buffoons! Idiots. They’re incapable of humiliating anyone but themselves.”

Peggy, the ultimate agent of good, is willing to roll over for the sake of maintaining _status_. Steve is stunned. She’s standing as tall and bold as ever, but now facing him down. Her face is tense, and she stands with her hands are clenched at her side, one fist twisting into her normally pristine skirt. She looks frustrated, sad, but more than that, exhausted.

But Steve can’t accept this. “You might be fine with this,” he says, “but I’m not.”

The fire in her expression dulls, and her voice is deadened when she says, “Fine. You may find employment elsewhere.”

“I— What?”

“Of course, you may stay until your new job is secured.”

“Are you—”

“And I’d be happy to recommend you to non-competing firms.” She flips out a contact book and skims the contents. “Any field you’re particularly interested in?”

“Peggy...” he says, moving towards her desk.

“Yes, Mr. Rogers?” she replies easily, still paging through her contacts.

“Come on! I don’t want to work somewhere else. This could— we could make this place better.”

“How long have you worked here?” Peggy asks, impassive.

Steve rolls a shoulder. “Couple months?”

“I’ve just finished my eighth year,” she says. Her face is unmoved. “I’ve learned that these are the conditions of succeeding at this job. For me, these are the conditions of succeeding at most jobs.” She lifts her gaze from her contact book, and looks sharply up at Steve. “You— You are not a woman, and so your world has different conditions. If you wish to avoid my conditions, you may find employment elsewhere, but I will not allow you to sully eight years of ceaseless work for your comfort—”

“It’s not just comfort,” Steve butts in. “It’s your safety. It’s respect—”

“Don’t lecture me on this!” she barks. “This is not a platform for you to be brave and stand up for me! This is my work. If you must stand up for yourself, you must stand up to leave.”

Steve quiets in the wake of her cold fury. She’s right, but he’s damn right too.

Eventually, he sighs, pinches the bridge of his nose. “There must be something we can do.”

“We work,” she says, her voice firm, brooking no arguments. “We win.”

\---

It takes Steve a while to adjust, to hold back threats when the senior attorneys circle around to him, but as the days wear on he becomes inured to the constant propositions. The inaction sits uneasily in his stomach, so he buries it in his work. He comes home tired and angry, and if Bucky’s not there to cool him down, it takes him hours to fall asleep.

They work. They win. Steve apologizes to Peggy, and she accepts without thought. Life goes on.

But the longer Steve endures it, the more comfortable the seniors get. Their comments edge the line between coy and blatant, until they get cocky enough to try it in a meeting. Steve barely even remembers what Hoffman says to Peggy, but he remembers the slow recognition that Hoffman disrespected Peggy to her _face_ , in a _meeting_ , and Steve remembers the instant surge of rage coursing through him, propelling him up out of his chair.

His chair scuffs loudly as he clambers to his feet. Peggy’s eyebrows draw slightly together, and all eyes in the room turn to him.

Steve knows he’s a small person, in some distant part of his brain that also knows he has ten fingers and a belly button, but he never thinks about it until he’s made to. And now, with the eyes of at least half a dozen disdainful, moneyed men on him, he is absolutely made to think about it. They look at him like he’s a barely a fleck on the ground.

“That was out of line,” he says anyway, voice too loud in the silent conference room. Peggy’s gaze goes hard, but Steve doesn’t stop. “You ought to apologize.”

The tension grows thicker, eyes darting between Steve, Peggy, and Hoffman. It’s a bright winter morning, edging into spring, and the sunlight stifles through the floor-to-ceiling windows. Peggy waits, preternaturally cool, her unsmiling mouth a vivid red, like an open gash.

Hoffman’s eyebrows creep up his forehead, before his face slides into an ingratiating expression. “I can see how that may have been misinterpreted,” he says. His voice is deep, commanding, and sounds disgustingly sincere. “If so, I apologize for any discomfort.”

“Of course,” Peggy says.

The half-apology amplifies the rushing sound in Steve’s ears, but Peggy flicks her eyes towards his chair, ordering him to sit down. He does, but his pulse beats rapidly in his fist, resting clenched atop his notepad. His notes become absolutely illegible.

The meeting ends slowly, as it always does, with chatter about weekend plans and wives and kids, and Peggy, charming as ever, joins in, the earlier incident seemingly forgotten. Steve waits until the conversation dies down, follows Peggy back to the office. He shuts the door behind them, and he turns back to see Peggy’s face twisted in fury.

“Don’t you _ever_ ,” she grinds out, “do that again.”

Steve splutters out, “He couldn’t— in a meeting!”

“I will handle it my _self_.” She tears the notepad out of Steve’s hands. “Get out of here. You’re done for today.”

“But I—”

“Hoffman won’t let this go. He’ll come back around. You can’t be here when he does.” She snaps her fingers, points at the door. “Go on.”

Confused, angry, Steve goes.

He doesn’t realize how badly he fucked up until he notices a man following him home. It’s perfectly ordinary for a man in a nice suit to get on his bus. Less so to find him transferring to the same bus at the edge of the city. After getting off the bus, Steve walks for the length of half a block, trying to convince himself he’s imagining it, but the persistent _click_ of expensive shoes on cracked cement follows close behind him. When he can’t take the curiosity any longer, he stops at an intersection and waits, but the man never approaches. Steve peeks over his shoulder. The fancy suit is nowhere to be found.

Steve doesn’t tell anyone, but he starts watching. Waiting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *works out my work frustrations through fic like a healthy adult*


	4. Chapter 4

He apologizes to Peggy again. She— she seems to accept it. They go to meetings, court, the local clinic, spend long nights researching, and gradually, things return to normal between the two of them.

With Colleen gone, however, they have to split up more often. Peggy sends Steve out most evenings to take statements and recruit clients, and Steve finds that now that he must wander around unfamiliar parts of D.C. alone, he’s getting mugged far more often. It’s no big deal; after his phone is stolen, he doesn’t have anything of value to lose. Occasionally, he gets some ugly purple bruises across his chest and stomach, but those are easy enough to hide, and he’s making enough now that losing his pocket money every now and then barely stresses him out.

Besides, as he and Peggy pull together their cases, as Steve watches her dominate courtroom after courtroom, he becomes increasingly confident in their ability to do something that’ll have real and measurable effects. Even when he’s jumped by a group of teenagers one breezy night, he feels good. He smiles as he thrashes out of their grip, smiles as he scrambles up a fire escape, and smiles as he lobs junk at their heads until they leave.

But things get weirder. 

One night, laden with groceries from wrist to shoulder, Steve struggles to dig his keys out of his pocket while Bucky tries to lever a bag of hot cheetos out from under Steve’s armpit. After minutes of jostling in place, distracted and bickering, Steve gets them both in the door. They get to the elevator before Steve spares a glance at the wall of mailslots. There’s someone there, as there often is. A young woman. He doesn’t recognize her, which is uncommon, but not alarmingly so. 

The elevator doors open. As Steve maneuvers himself into the elevator alongside Bucky, he realizes: the woman is fiddling with his and Bucky’s mailbox.

“Hey,” he yells, and she doesn’t look up at him. “What’re you doing?”

She puts something in her pocket, calm as anything, doesn’t spare a glance his way as the elevator doors slide shut.

“Did you see that?” he asks Bucky once the elevator lurches into motion.

Bucky licks some cheeto dust off his thumb. “Yep. Think we mighta been robbed?”

They scour the apartment, but none of their valuables were taken. Bucky’s laptop and computer screens are exactly where he left them, as is the heirloom ring he keeps under his bed. After completing his search, Bucky leans against Steve’s door, fiddles with the faded velvet ring box, while Steve checks for his own belongings. His emergency cash supply—a new possibility in Steve’s life—and his work laptop are both still there.

Steve scratches his head. He’s missing something. “I think everything’s here.”

Bucky squints, snaps the deep navy ring box open and closed absentmindedly. “You left that clunker open?”

Steve glances at his laptop, which is propped open on his desk. “Maybe?” he hazards.

“Wait,” Bucky says, whirling around and hurrying back to his room. “Shit, shit, shit.”

Bucky spends the rest of the afternoon flitting between Steve’s laptop and his own. “They knew what they were doing,” Bucky explains during a brief cheeto break. “They went for your dinky laptop first. Got them past my walls too.” 

“How?”

“Using information from your files?” Bucky shrugs. “More important question is why.” He licks his cheeto fingers, and turns back to their laptops. He spends a few more hours peering at the screens while Steve sits and worries. He suspects he knows who did this, and why. He won’t tell Bucky just yet, for fear of endangering him. He can still solve this on his own.

So Steve decides to go out, do some sleuthing, despite Bucky’s protestations. “I had a lot of folks’ personal information on there,” he tells Bucky. “I’ve got to reach out to them.”

“I’ll come with you, get some fresh air,” Bucky says unconvincingly, fingers still engaged in a flurry of motion over his keyboard. He edges away from his computer, like a bandaid peeling away from a scab.

“It’s okay. Finish your work.”

“Ste—”

Steve slips out the door before Bucky can say anything else.

Steve makes the rounds, wanders from complex to complex to warn his new friends. Mostly, they shrug it off. “What do they think they can get off’a me?” one of his first clients asks. Steve frowns. He doesn’t know, and it worries him.

Being so blatantly lost in thought, Steve attracts some unwanted attention on the streets. In the end, he’s glad he wore his running shoes. It’s past midnight when he gets home, panting and sweating. 

The apartment air is warm and stifling after his long run. He moves clumsily through the silent darkness, disturbed only by the glow of the microwave clock and the rumbling of the refrigerator. He hangs his coat, toes out of his shoes, and slings his jeans over the couch, intending to fall directly into bed. 

A hand jerks out and grabs his wrist. 

“S’bedtime, Rogers,” Bucky grumbles from a nest of blankets on the couch. 

Steve tries to will his heartbeat to slow back down.

“Sleep,” Bucky commands.

Steve shrugs. Limbs heavy with exhaustion, Steve goes willingly as Bucky pulls him into the blankets. Steve ends up with his head wedged into Bucky’s armpit and his ass hanging off the edge, but it’s far from the most uncomfortable night’s sleep he’s had. He releases a deep sigh, and settles in.

\---

The next day is a court day, the last in a week-long trial, so Steve doesn’t have time to mention the break in to Peggy. He’s distracted besides, watching Peggy win their case. It’s a big one. Not  _ the  _ big one in Steve’s mind, which is reserved for the volunteer case that Steve’s been digging into, but it’s a  _ big  _ win for the firm. A win that’ll draw some eyes.

When Steve and Peggy come back to the office, the other senior attorneys circle by, vulture-like, with increasing frequency, offering congratulations or asking for details, until Boyd, a tall man with a greasy swoop of blond hair arranged around his wide forehead, finally catches Steve alone just after Peggy steps into a meeting. He saunters over and slaps an envelope onto Steve’s desk, then glides easily back out of the office. 

Steve quirks an eyebrow and tears the envelope open. A glossy photo slides out, and Steve sees his own face, his mugshot, printed in beautiful resolution. A little scrap of paper taped to the corner says, “Let’s chat,” followed by an email address.

Steve’s not sure what to make of it. His charges have long since been cleared, and he hasn’t been out on the streets since he started this job. But he looks closer—this is his mug shot from New York, from years ago, when he was arrested for fighting a bunch of assholes in high school. These records are  _ sealed _ . No one is supposed to know about them. He doesn’t even think Peggy knows about them. And she said he couldn’t get arrested again if he wanted to work here. She might have been joking then, but they have high profile clients to think of now. Steve doesn’t want to compromise Peggy’s position yet again.

Hands shaking and sweaty, he emails the address on the scrap of paper. 

He gets a reply instantly. “you’ve got info we want,” it says, “and we’ve got info other ppl shouldn’t have. let’s make a deal.” 

Steve’s eyes widen, and he jerks around, as if the culprits are hiding around the corner of his desk. How’d they find this? He feels stupid, useless, and uncertain. He goes to Peggy’s office, waits on the couch until she gets back from her meeting.

Looking out the window, he counts 93 pedestrians pass by outside before she returns. He stands at her arrival.

“Oh dear,” she says, taking in his tense stance. “Well, let me sit down before our next fight begins.”

After she settles, he stands before her desk, twisting his pen open and closed in his hands, over and over, explaining the situation. Peggy smirks when he tells her about Boyd, grins outright when he shows her the email. 

“You already know I don’t mind an arrest record, and the upscale clients don’t  _ have  _ to meet you,” she says calmly. She examines his screen for a second longer, then rolls away from her desk. She raises an eyebrow at Steve. “How do you feel about playing double agent?” 

“What?” Steve asks, blindsided. He turns the idea over in his head, halfway between disturbed and intrigued. This isn’t what he signed up for, certainly, but he likes the idea of finally being able to act out against the seniors without hurting Peggy. Ultimately, though, it comes down to an unavoidable truth: “I can’t lie.”

“These boys make it easy,” she says. “Act like you fear them and they’ll give you anything you ask.” 

She speaks with a certainty that hints at experience. He wonders, idly, if she’s ever manipulated him that way. He hopes she hasn’t needed do. 

Seeing his hesitance, she adds eagerly, “Steve, this could be our chance to turn it around.”

Steve sighs, ignores the chill creeping up his spine. “Fine,” he says. “Tell me what to do.”

\---

He’s a terrible actor, but he gives it a go. Peggy feeds him harmless information, all true, of course, and Steve waits for Boyd in a dank alley behind the office building to hand the information over. His hands shake with nerves, and whatever mold lines the dumpsters out back also makes his breathing shallow. He hardly needs to act at all. Boyd arrives finally, with Hoffman and Conrad in tow, but none of them seem to notice anything when they snatch the folder out of Steve’s trembling hands. They offer their slick, charming grins, Conrad ruffling Steve’s hair, and then they slink off in the darkness.

Espionage is a process, Peggy keeps reminding him, useless if you don’t keep it up. So he starts to flinch when they come by the office, easy enough to fake, and when he stays quiet in their presence they mistake his restless silence for fear. Over time, they stop being careful around him. First, they start making snide comments about Peggy, glancing over their shoulders to see how Steve reacts. This is the hardest part. But then, he starts to hear useful information: two quiet deals made in the men’s restroom, several more in common areas that he strolls openly into, and another in a meeting room before Peggy arrives. 

Steve’s information is  _ good _ , and Peggy uses it to mold the firm in her image. She’s subtle, knows when to stand by, when to throw a wrench in a plan, and when to commandeer one. While the lion’s share of big cases still land in the men’s hands, a few key cases begin to slip out of their grasps. The cases fall, seemingly accidentally, onto Peggy’s docket. 

What’s more, no one follows Steve home again. No more shallow scratches on his doorknob, or around the keyhole in his mailbox, no more traces of shady activity on his computer. Bucky’s pleased, assumes Steve took care of it in a responsible manner. Steve smiles, a little uneasily. “Sure did.”

A small part of Steve is perturbed by Peggy’s small, satisfied grins, her innocent eyes, her natural skill at deception. But their good intentions—and their results—must justify the foul play, right? How else could Peggy do this? How else could Steve?

\---

“There’s more she’s not telling you,” Boyd insists one day. “We’re getting cases earmarked for her now, but she’s still getting the high profile clients. And the class action!” He turns to Steve. “She’s hiding something. We need the stuff she won’t give even you.”

Steve looks down, tries to keep his mind off of what  _ he  _ isn’t giving Boyd. Instead, he hears himself say, “I know a computer guy.”

Boyd’s lip twitches. “Interesting. Discreet?”

“Very.”

So per Steve’s recommendation, Bucky comes in the next morning, all sleek lines and long limbs, looking like a million fucking bucks in a pinstripe number he pulled out of nowhere. Steve gestures in outraged disbelief, and Bucky just rubs a hand across his stubble, cocks a sideways grin, and disappears into Boyd’s office.

Afterwards, when Boyd’s gone to lunch, Steve and Bucky loiter in the stairwell, waiting to meet up with Peggy in private. 

“They  _ are  _ stupid,” Bucky says, fiddling with his USB drive. “Peggy was right.”

“Peggy is always right,” Peggy says, entering suddenly and startling Steve into an aborted jump.

“Is Peggy hungry?” Bucky asks, transitioning easily. “I’m in the mood for burgers.”

Peggy purses her lips, but ultimately agrees.

They go to a classic little diner a few blocks away, bustling with the lunch rush. They scoot into a too-small booth, where their legs bump up against each other. Steve and Bucky flick crumpled up bits of their napkins and straw wrappers at each other until Peggy’s hand flashes out, catching both flicks in her palm. Steve laughs, and Bucky gets that dreamy look in his eyes. For the first time since Steve started at the firm, they don’t talk about work for the entirety of their lunch hour. 

Before they go, Steve sneaks to the cash register to pay. Bucky objects when he realizes, tries to convince Steve to split the bill, but Peggy simply thanks Steve, places an affectionate hand between his shoulderblades. When they head back, the office is still a misogynistic hellhole, it’s a nice day, overall.


	5. Chapter 5

Steve’s working himself very hard, trying to be everywhere at once, to never let anyone out of his sight. He can’t leave Peggy alone with the senior attorneys, not now that he knows what they say about her behind her back, and he doesn’t want to let Bucky linger in their sights either. On top of his actual work, he wanders around the office all day, skips lunches to eavesdrop, goes to great lengths to butt in at useful times. Peggy only has to call Bucky in to hack once or twice more, and she never gets caught behind closed doors with those asshole attorneys again. Steve— well, Steve slithers in before those doors close. But he can handle it. As long as his friends are okay.

Steve sleeps less, eats less, no  _ time _ , but Peggy’s a rising star, in the firm and in the public eye. A reporter from  _ Feministing _ comes to set up an interview with Peggy, and Steve feels a twinge of jealousy, thinking of his abandoned articles. It’s all right though, he tells himself, looking over the casework they have set up for the next month. He can see concrete effects from what he’s doing here, at least.

Even with their upward momentum, Peggy has her eyes on an untouchable case, tangled up in the other attorneys’ connections. It’ll bring them closer to some federal politician, or something. Steve’s never had Peggy’s head for planning. Steve tries to get her to change course, but he’s never met someone as stubborn as he is. So Peggy ignores his advice. 

At Peggy’s request, Bucky starts to come in again, bearing tiny USB drives and, often, takeout. At Steve’s request, Bucky mostly comes after hours, when the senior attorneys have left and the computers are unmanned. 

“The trick,” Bucky says one night, leaning nonchalantly against the counter in the kitchen, “is to make their computers run better when you’re done. No one likes to look a gift horse in the mouth.” He’s wrist-deep in a jar of chocolate covered raisins, but still looks effortlessly cool in his crisp white button-up, shadowed and blue under the faint light of a nighttime lightstrip. 

Looking at Bucky, Steve fidgets with his own crumpled dress shirt, and wonders if he can tell how swollen Steve’s eyelids are.

Peggy, sipping hot breakfast tea at 11 o’clock at night, quirks a smile. “I don’t want to know how you learned that.” 

“You certainly don’t, lady justice.” 

She raises an eyebrow at him, and Bucky’s grin goes bashful. Steve’s heart flutters a little. They’re just so unbearably  _ charming _ . Steve ought to leave them alone, allow whatever is between Bucky and Peggy to blossom, but when Steve approaches Peggy’s smile widens, and Bucky’s arm slides around his shoulders, easy, and Steve can’t convince himself to edge out of the room. They stay in the office for a few hours yet, drinking tea and speaking quietly, reluctant to break the strange intimacy of a dark kitchen late at night.

\---

In the senior meeting the next morning, Steve reaches a new level of exhaustion, where the morning sunlight seems to suck the life out of him rather than invigorate him. But, he hears through his sleep-deprived haze that Peggy gets assigned the case she was after. With the federal connection. She presses her lips together in a faint smile, a barely-there hint at her enthusiasm. Before the meeting even ends, she sends Bucky a text in their new group chat, and he meets them for lunch again. 

They flirt, unabashedly, at lunch, and Steve finds himself lost in the crossfire. More than one salacious wink swerves to catch Steve, a dirty joke lands at his feet, and Bucky’s doting hand wipes something from his lips.

“Perfect,” Bucky says, once he’s wiped the food away. 

Steve is inclined to agree: it is perfect. It goes like this for weeks.Steve spies. Bucky hacks. Peggy takes them to lunch at little hole in the wall restaurants where they spend the hour planning. They work, and they win, case after case, ramping up to Peggy’s federal case. And Steve is happy. Worn, but happy.

\--- 

With Peggy’s big case nearly over, tensions are high among the other attorneys. If she wins, she’ll knock Roberts and Lenihan out of the top tier for good. The attorneys are antsy. Steve tries his best to mitigate Boyd and co.’s suspicions. Steve lets on how worn he is, how little he understands about Peggy’s machinations, but Hoffman’s eyes still narrow when he looks at Steve. 

He corners Steve in the pantry shortly after the verdict is announced. “How does she keep doing it?” he asks. “We should have her at every corner, but it’s the other way around.” 

They’ve had this conversation a few times now, and each time, Steve has been able to cower and tremble his way out of it. Exhaustion sets his hands shaking and eyes watering, as usual, and Steve tries to slip out of the pantry with the frenzied promise of more information, but Hoffman wants answers today, and Steve— Steve is a terrible liar. 

When Hoffman figures it out, he barely reacts. His lips thin, and his pupils seem to retract, tiny pinpricks of black steel in his pale, sunken eyes. He shoves out of the pantry, silent. In the dry air of the pantry, Steve picks up a box of raisins, wonders how long it will take them to plot their revenge.

\---

He doesn’t have to wonder for long. 

They jump him in the parking lot that night. These men aren’t terribly sophisticated. Steve fights back, of course. It’s just a bunch of rich asshole lawyers; they don’t know how to fight. He gets a few good punches in, but there are more of them than there are of him, and they— 

Steve gets it bad. 

Afterwards, he’s lying there, his face swollen and raw, his back mottled and aching, and, too spent to do anything else, he passes out. 

\---

A Peggy-shaped apparition wakes him up some indeterminable amount of time later, and the next thing he knows he’s lying facedown in his bed, a plastic bag of ice stinging his bare back. 

He sleeps like the dead. 

\---

A splatter of lukewarm water under his back wakes him. The ceiling, blurry and pockmarked above him, does not tell him why he’s suddenly drenched, no matter how he peers at the aging stains. He shifts, and something crinkles and pokes a sharp corner into his sore, sore back. He must have burst the plastic bag of ice against the mattress. Why is he so sore?

Oh. Last night. 

Doesn’t matter, deal with it later. There are raised voices vibrating through the walls. Probably the neighbors fighting again. He concentrates and—

“—too hard, puts himself in dangerous positions without regard for his own safety.” A distant part of him recognizes this woman’s voice, the steady, relentless timbre of it. Recognizes the sound of worry in this woman’s voice.

“Fuckin’ tell me about it,” Bucky says.

Not the neighbors. Steve rolls out of bed, hears the woman say “—have a plan of action—”, elbows tenderly into a shirt, hears Bucky say “—can’t tell that guy to do anything—”, and slaps open the door to the living room.

It has exactly the effect he was hoping for. They turn to him, both of them wide-eyed and frozen. Peggy has both hands planted on the kitchen table, looming over Bucky, who is leaned as far back as possible in a kitchen chair, shoulders raised so high his ears disappear behind them. Bucky’s expression flickers, from slack-jawed surprise, to creased worry, then into a look of mild frustration, and finally into warm indifference.

“Hey man,” Bucky says. His voice is kind. Bucky’s not this gentle. “How you feeling?”

“Do I look that bad?” Steve asks.

“Would you like to sit down?” Peggy asks.

“‘M fine guys.” Steve shuffles into the kitchen, tries to remember his normal morning routine. Cereal, probably.  He reaches up to the cupboard and hisses as the stretch pulls on a fresh scab on his torso. His fingers probe at the pain, and he’s surprised to find a wide bandage.

A hand lands on his shoulder. “Let me get that for you buddy,” Bucky says, reaching past Steve to grab the corn flakes. 

Peggy, who rarely operates below 110%, says, “I made a mistake. I let it get too far. We need to take a step back from the job and reevaluate our priorities.”

Steve rolls his eyes. “I can handle this. I know how bullies work.”

“This is different,” she insists.

Steve snorts. “Why? ‘Cause they’re rich?”

“Well, partially.”

Steve snorts again.

“Don’t think I won’t suspend you,” Peggy warns.

“Come on, Peg,” Steve says, and Peggy’s eyebrows raise. Perhaps he’s getting too familiar, but it’s  _ early _ and he’s in his own damn kitchen. He falls into a chair while Bucky continues to assemble his cereal for him. “There’s so much to do. You need me.”

“I was quite successful for some time before you came along, thank you very much,” she says archly. “Your health is deteriorating, and I—”

“My health is  _ always  _ deteriorating—”

Bucky butts in, “—because you don’t pay attention to it.”

Steve refocuses his glare to Bucky, and Bucky’s hands go up, appeasing.

“I’m just saying—” Bucky begins, and Peggy immediately jumps in, “—you must take some time off. I’ll see our cases through.”

“That’s not fair!” Steve retorts. “I do just as much as you do, I deserve—”

“Guys...” Bucky interrupts again, voice low.

Peggy glances at Bucky, then says to them both, “This discussion is over.”

Steve says, “But—” at the same time Peggy begins, “Don’t—”

“Come on!” Bucky roars over them. “Guys!”

Steve and Peggy’s heads swivel in his direction, both ready to pounce.

“You  _ both _ need to step the fuck back,” Bucky says. Peggy’s mouth opens— 

“Don’t act like you’re unaffected, Miss ‘Ninety-minutes-is-a-full-sleep-cycle,’” Bucky cuts in, raising his fingers in air quotes.

Peggy’s mouth twitches, an expression so subtle Steve would never have noticed it if not for his time working with her. She feels she’s been exposed. He examines her more closely, as he finally realizes: the work is affecting her too. Wearing yesterday’s makeup, Bucky’s sweatpants, and a rumpled blouse, she looks so unlike what Steve is used to. Her too-pale face, her shadowed eyes, and her thin wrists, bisected by starkly blue veins— she looks  _ normal _ . She shifts her weight as she stands, an uncommonly nervous gesture, and Steve considers how he could convince her to rest without being cajoled into resting himself. Steve can’t accept that  _ he _ needs a break, but Peggy certainly deserves one.

Bucky collapses into the chair next to Steve, begins scrubbing at his face with one hand. “It’s too goddamn early for this.”

Peggy looks down, lets her shoulders drop and her face relax. “It seems we are at an impasse,” she says quietly. A white flag.

“How did I get wrapped up in the lives of the two most stubborn and intense people in D.C.”

Steve rests his fingers on Bucky’s wrist. The corner of Bucky’s mouth tugs up for a second, not quite a smile, but nearly there.

“For the sake of my crumbling sanity,” Bucky jokes, his tone landing slightly too serious, “will you both take it easy for once in your goddamn lives.”

Peggy looks to Steve, a challenge in her eyes.  _ Together or not at all _ , she seems to say.

With great magnanimity, Steve concedes at last, “If it’ll keep you out of the madhouse, I guess I can take a vacation day.”

Bucky smiles, sly. “At least three days. Punk.” 

“Can those days be spread out over the month?” Peggy asks. “Or perhaps the year?”

Bucky kicks out of his chair with exaggerated drama. “You punks want breakfast? We got some grade A eggs for some grade A jerks.”

Peggy laughs, slips awkwardly into a kitchen chair. “That would be a lovely way to begin our enforced vacation.”

“Yeah,” Steve says lamely, because she’s right. Looking at the two of them, both uncharacteristically clumsy in the morning hour, both bleary-eyed and slow, and all the more beautiful for it. He could take some time off, if it looked like this.


	6. Chapter 6

He notices a change when he comes back to work the next week. The senior attorneys, they whisper, snide hissing that comes to an abrupt stop when Steve or Peggy approaches. For the most part, they keep their distance, instead peering at Peggy’s office from over each other’s shoulders or around corners. They’re cautious when they approach Steve, finally.

“A truce,” Conrad offers. “Don’t sue, and it’s all water under the bridge.”

“We swear,” Boyd adds. “What happened was the natural end to it all. It’ll be fine now.”

Steve narrows his eyes, his pulse pounding beneath his bruises. He inhales deeply. Thinks of Bucky. Exhales. Thinks of Peggy. “Fine,” he bites out. “It can’t affect Carter.”

“‘Course buddy,” Hoffman says, bolder than the other two. “We can ignore her.” He ruffles Steve’s hair on his way out, and Steve has to take another ten minutes to calm himself down.

The hissing whispers continue, but, after that conversation, they’re rarely directed at Steve. And, he’s just not in the office as much. Peggy starts to leave early, at 6 or 7, and when she goes she lures Steve out too. Sometimes, she tries to be subtle about it: she asks him to pick up the mail from her lockbox on his way home, which closes at 6:30, or she sends him off with dry cleaning to drop off, halfway to his and Bucky’s apartment. More often, Steve’s stubborn ass forces her to be direct, and odds are good that any given work day will end with Peggy standing over Steve’s laptop, pursing her lips, until he slinks away from his desk. 

Steve takes the train home when the sun’s still up a couple times, and he can almost feel time spread out before him, lazy and inviting. In the evening, he’ll sprawl on the couch to read for an hour, or start cooking dinner, or get some writing done, finally. Bucky starts taking his evening work home so he’ll be there before Steve arrives, and the two of them work quietly, cold bottles of beer sweating at their elbows, like old times.

Quiet evenings aside, there is still a  _ lot  _ to do at the firm, all the damn time, and sometimes Peggy doesn’t remember to shoo herself out of the office. When it starts to get to 8 or 9 and she and Steve are still lost in their work, Bucky comes to get them. The first time, he comes at 10, with a huge grease-stained bag of takeout and a disapproving frown. They eat on the floor of Peggy’s office, watching episodes of  _ Brooklyn 99 _ on Bucky’s laptop.

The second time he comes, at half-past nine on a Friday, his hair is slicked back from the rain and his arm is looped around a pretty girl’s waist. 

“You guys feel like heading out?” he asks, real cool. “We’re gonna get a bite.”

Peggy agrees, but Steve doesn’t miss her dour expression. And Steve doesn’t miss that Bucky never brings another girl to her office, either. 

That incident aside, Peggy seems to feel bad for bringing Bucky all the way downtown so late at night. Whenever Bucky has to come fetch them, she assuages her guilt by treating him and Steve at the corner diner Bucky loves. Bucky orders the fried chicken, Peggy the fish, and Steve eats half a burger and sneaks bites off their heaping plates. 

Once the diner habit is established, Bucky starts to come more often, and earlier in the evening. At one point he comes only a little past seven. Probably for the free food, Steve reasons, but neither he nor Peggy minds the company. Though after Bucky suggests the burger place the second time in one week, Peggy narrows her eyes at him. Before they can bicker about it, Steve introduces them to a Chinese restaurant a client recommended to him. Quickly, he adds, “My treat,” his voice altogether too firm for someone offering a gift. Peggy and Bucky share a look, but don’t argue. 

They order chicken and veggies and beef and pork and rice and rice and rice. Bucky is terrible about reaching over people, particularly that first night when he tries beef and oyster sauce for the first time. Peggy’s bad, too; noticing Bucky’s avoidance of the snap peas, Peggy devotes herself to getting something green onto Bucky’s place and into his mouth. 

“At least one, James,” she pleads, but her mastery of chopsticks is amateur at best, and she doesn’t manage to land a single green bean on his ever-moving plate. 

Watching Peggy maneuver her chopsticks fruitlessly in the mapo tofu, Bucky grins. “Glad to know you’re bad at  _ something _ ,” he teases.

Instead of biting back, Peggy flushes and laughs, her eyes almost shut with how wide her smile is. Bucky smirks as he scoops tofu onto Peggy’s plate. Steve thinks again of how good they look together, both so confident, Peggy straight and certain where Bucky is loose and easy. They make each other laugh, too, Steve thinks dreamily, as Peggy pulls a bark of laughter from Bucky. Peggy’s smile goes almost shy at the sound. 

It’s a nice contrast the work, which is now more grueling and often disheartening, to come out with the two best people in Steve’s life and think of nothing but themselves. 

\---

Before big case deadlines, when it’s impossible leave the office, impossible to go out and eat, Bucky still comes and tries to pull them away. 

“Too much to do,” Peggy mumbles, without looking up from the briefing in her hand. 

The first time, Bucky yanks the briefing out of her grip. From across the room, Steve hisses. Peggy’s head turns slowly, her eyes slitted like a snake’s. Her gaze, cool and silent, bores into Bucky, until at last he puts the briefing back in her waiting hand. Even holding the file, she continues to watch him. He backs away from her desk, and only then do her suspicious eyes return to her briefing. 

Bucky’s hovers in the middle of the room for a moment before he ambles over to Steve, sits sheepishly next to him, and pulls out his phone. They work silently for a time, but after Bucky spends half an hour sulkily scrolling through Reddit, he rolls to his feet. 

“I’m gonna get takeout,” he says.

Steve squints at his wristwatch. Past midnight. He says, “It’s late. You shouldn’t go alone.”

Bucky shrugs into his coat. “I’ll be fine.” 

“Dumbass,” Steve mumbles, already getting to his feet. He stretches his hands above his head, hears his vertebrae pop satisfyingly back into place. When he lowers his arms, he’s surprised to see Peggy staring at him, hawk-like. Her eyes slide to Bucky, too. 

“Uh,” Steve says. “Want us to get you something?”

She nods, looking thoughtful.

“What d’you want?” Bucky asks. 

She shakes her head.

“Ooookay,” Steve says. He turns to Bucky, who shrugs.

The streets are not empty, but they are quiet, this late in the commercial center of D.C., and their steps are lazy as they wander away from the office.

“Where to?” Steve asks.

Bucky shrugs. His face has gone a little pink, probably from the cold, but it’s hard to read his expression with his scarf pulled up to his nose. Bucky’s eyes drift to Steve’s, and Steve turns away, not  knowing why.

“We’ll find something,” Steve says. “Gotta stretch our legs anyways.” 

Bucky nods, oddly nonverbal.

Steve glances sideways at Bucky. Curious, how silent Bucky is, even this late into the night, when he usually starts over-sharing or rambling. Curious, too, how Peggy looked at Bucky, and at Steve. Unlike Bucky, Peggy does get quieter as the night goes on, more harried and focused, but her gaze on them before they left was unusually meditative. 

Bucky looks like he has something on the tip of his tongue, waiting to tumble out, but he stays tight-lipped, walks faster with his fists jammed into his pockets. Steve’s mouth quirks up. It’ll come out soon enough. For now, Steve’s content to walk in silence with his emotionally constipated best friend. Bucky has certainly done the same for him.

They end up near the city’s strip of nightclubs, where they stumble upon a 24-hour kebab stand with a smattering of plastic tables spread out before it. A rich, garlic smoke emerges from its one glowing window. It’s still too early for party-people to seek their post-drinking meals, so the tables are empty. 

Steve and Bucky hazard a guess at what Peggy would like—something spicy, probably with lamb. They place an order to-go, and set out to wait. Most of the tables are wet from a misty rain, but one narrow bench, under the lip of the stand’s roof, remains mostly dry. Bucky sits, avoiding the puddles, and Steve slides in too, close enough that he can feel Bucky’s warmth through his jacket.

He frowns. “Your jacket’s still too thin.”

Bucky looks at Steve, his expression unreadable, before he settles into something more playful. “I’ve got my own little furnace here anyway,” Bucky says, yanking Steve in close to muss up his hair.

Steve pushes Bucky’s hand away from his hair, but stays where Bucky pulled him, his neck caught in the crook of Bucky’s elbow. Steve’s cheeks go hot, but at least he sees a flush across Bucky’s face as well. Steve looks at the worn knee of Bucky’s jeans, and inexplicably thinks of placing his hand there, seeing if he can feel the warmth there, too. 

The cashier calls out to them with their order, and Bucky launches off the bench to take it. 

When they get back to the office, Peggy’s immersed in her work again, oblivious to the world around her. Steve, feeling awkward and uncertain about whatever just happened, is happy to join her there.

\---

The next time a big deadline rolls around, Steve hopes for another midnight excursion, hopes to watch Bucky’s face turn pink and to see that odd expression. Instead, Bucky comes with takeout already in hand, kebab, as tradition apparently now demands. Bucky lays the food out on the floor, the only flat surface not occupied by reams of paper, and when he finishes, he whistles at Peggy. She arches a disdainful brow at him.

“Food,” he says placatingly, palms up.

She circles around the desk like a panther circling its prey, and for a breathless moment Steve’s not sure what’s going to happen. He wants to laugh. Bucky backs up. With a parting death-glare, Peggy seems settles on the floor, happy to pick through what she’s found there. Steve and Bucky join her. They eat in a friendly silence. Steve watches them, his two partners, and is surprised to see that odd, flushed expression on Bucky’s face again. This time, though, his clenched jaw and his intense stare are focused on Peggy. 

Peggy, for her part, is focused on her food. 

\---

Peggy gets two tickets to a baseball game as a gift from a client. Bucky and Peggy’s eyes gleam as they open the envelope. They are  _ fantastic  _ tickets, but there are only two; they can’t all go. 

“I have a date that night anyway,” Steve blurts, falling on his sword before anyone else can.

Peggy’s mouth drops open, not to politely object, but in unhappy surprise, and Steve is so shocked by her reaction that his mouth drops open too.

“I met her at that figure drawing class,” he adds, dumbly.

Bucky shakes Steve by the shoulders. “What’d I tell you, ladykiller?” he cheers.

And that’s all it takes. Bucky and Peggy go to the game together without him. Steve does ask the girl out on the day of the game, just so his lie has a little more meat to it. She declines politely, so Steve goes back to the apartment to wait. 

Around 11PM, hours after the game should have ended, Steve sends Bucky a text, and, out of habit, he parts the blinds to look out the window like a worried mother. 

“What do you expect to find out there?” Bucky’d always ask him. Steve would shrug, not interested in stopping. 

This time, though, he actually finds who he’s looking for.

From six floors up, they’re tiny, just little figures sitting on the curb across the street with paper-bagged bottles in hand. Bucky leans back on his elbows, looking up at the cloudy sky. Peggy crouches forward, facing Bucky. Steve flushes. He’s seen that posture on Bucky, and on the girls Bucky’s brought home. Steve knows what comes next. He shuts the blinds.

He lies awake that night, despite his best efforts to sleep it off. Bucky comes in around 3 AM, tiptoeing around like he always does after a date. Steve breathes evenly, tries to quell the unjustified hurt he feels. 


	7. Chapter 7

One magical Friday, after a case closes, Peggy invites them both to her apartment. 

They do a little work, Peggy and Steve compiling notes, Bucky working out some bugs in his website. In one of his fits of distraction, Bucky digs through the DVDs on Peggy’s shelf, ends up queuing up her box set of the BBC’s  _ Pride and Prejudice _ serial. They all watch passively as they work until Mr. Darcy, emerging soaking from a lake, manages to drag them away. They watch, rapt and red-faced at the wet cling of Darcy’s shirt. Steve’s traitorous stomach gives a low growl.

Peggy stands. “Dinner?” she squeaks, stepping briskly out of the room.

She begins clanking around in the kitchen, and Bucky leans back from his laptop, chair creaking. He holds his lip between his teeth, smirks at Steve. 

“Seems hungry, huh?” Bucky murmurs.

“Yep.” Steve steps briskly out of the room, too.

She does actually have ingredients to cook with, Peggy informs them. So Peggy sets about preparing steak and beans, and Bucky wanders in and begins whipping up a strange dessert mostly made of digestive biscuits, condensed milk, and marshmallows, all of which Peggy has in copious supply, and Steve chops vegetables for a salad, just to contribute. 

Steve finishes first, of course, and goes to help Peggy. He hovers by her elbow, fetching various spices or cooking implements, and then when Bucky puts his concoction in the oven, he comes to help too. Six hands around a stove are too many, they quickly learn. Peggy gives them a stern look over her shoulder, and wordlessly they back up, going to lean against a counter out of the way. Peggy splashes wine across the cooking steaks, and the air goes thick with rich steam on top of the scent of caramelizing marshmallows. 

As she finishes the steak, Peggy pours wine for Steve and Bucky as well, and for herself. She slots herself between the two of them against the counter, and they all stand while the meat hisses and gurgles. Faint echoes of  _ Pride and Prejudice _ filter in from the other room, and a warmth pulses beneath Steve’s wine-warmed skin. They don’t get much work done after that, instead sitting curled up on the lawn chairs on Peggy’s deck, eating steak and drinking wine, feeling decadent. It’s warm enough now to sit out bare-legged, though the mosquito bites from that first night discourage them thereafter.

The next time, they go to Steve and Bucky’s place. They work for hours, until their backs are stiff from stooping over in the hard-backed kitchen chairs. They order take out, pull a few beers from the fridge, and, when it’s not raining, they go to the roof. They lie splayed out like starfish, heads and hands nearly touching, food laid out by their elbows, a bug repellent candle flickering low light across their faces.

It becomes more regular, going to one home or another at the end of the day to finish work, try out new recipes, watch period dramas. Most days of the week, Bucky comes to the office with takeout or groceries already in hand, and he drives them to Peggy’s apartment, which is more spacious, though tidied far less often than Steve and Bucky’s place. 

They still stay late at the office sometimes too, and Bucky still joins them. They crowd around the kitchen counter and hold mumbly conversations about nothing important. It’s not until they start going to Peggy’s flat regularly that they realize that the office brings out a side of them that is too sharp and charming, not quite honest. After that, they have little need for the office kitchen.

\---

Steve’s slouching on Peggy counter at 3 AM one night, his head propped on Bucky’s shoulder, and watching Peggy absentmindedly sort through M&M's in her hand. They leave bright little sugar prints on her palm. 

Voice low, Bucky whispers something like, “What are we doing?”

When Steve looks at him, his face is open, content. He’s also watching Peggy play with her candy. Peggy stops, though, and looks up at Bucky. “What do you mean, darling?” Peggy says.

Steve thinks the three of them must look beautiful like this, out of the glaring chrome of the office. Instead, the weak light from the hood over Peggy’s stove spills past Steve and Bucky,  leaving Peggy’s hands on the rough oak table in shadows. Bucky rubs at his face, looks up, his face tilting into the warm light a little more.

Yes, Steve thinks, beautiful.

\---

On Fridays, Steve and Bucky begin to crash at Peggy’s place after work. It starts accidentally. No longer in panic overdrive mode, Steve’s body gets tired early. Once it gets to 1 or 2 AM, Steve falls straight asleep any time he’s even vaguely horizontal. The first time, Peggy laughs him back awake within seconds. The second time is a Wednesday night, Bucky has to shake Steve awake to take him home.

The third time, though, Steve doesn’t stir until dawn, when shafts of sunlight begin to break through the surrounding buildings. Still in his rumpled work clothes, he pushes up onto his elbows, and an impossibly soft blanket slips off his shoulders and pools around his hips. He sees Bucky on the other leg of the L-shaped couch, one arm thrown over his eyes, the other dangling off the side, a blanket tangled around his legs. 

Steve stumbles to his feet and wobbles through the house, not knowing what he’s looking for until he finds her.

Steve has been in Peggy’s room before; has leaned over her immaculate bed, lain sheafs of paper across the scarlet comforter; has sat on the floor, his spine bruising against her narrow desk while she tapped at her laptop above him; has waited, haltingly at the door, while she searched for some perfect tome from her small bookshelf. Steve has only been in Peggy’s room when it was really Peggy’s office.

Now, in a moth-eaten t-shirt, Peggy sits at her desk, a mirror propped up on top of four large books, and an assortment of tubes and bottles and compacts scattered atop her folders. She catches Steve’s reflection in her mirror.

“Steve?” she asks, eyebrows raised. Her face is patchy and red, as Steve has never seen it before, and filmy from a cream freshly rubbed into the skin. A wide, black band holds back her hair, which is done up in curlers. Between her thumb and middle finger, she holds a beige puff.

“Oh— uh— pardon me,” he stammers, already backing out the door. She tucks her chin into her shoulder to hide a smile. Not unhappy or startled as Steve had assumed. “Actually,” he says, “do you want company?” 

A pause. Then she says, “All right.” She glances around. “You may sit on the bed.”

So he does, watches her soft fingers reach for bottles and compacts, sweep colors across her cheeks and over her eyelids. When she’s done, she looks the same as always, but it’s enchanting, watching her put herself together.

Something shifts in the doorway, and they both turn to see Bucky leaned against the frame, a mug of tea between his hands. He holds the mug up to his face, like he made it for himself, but when Peggy sweeps by, he pushes the mug into her hands. She brings the mug to her face, his hands still trapped beneath hers, and she presses her lips against his thumb. 

“Thank you darling,” she says.

“Yeah,” Bucky breathes.

Once the seal is broken, Steve and Bucky start edging into Peggy’s room any morning they sleep over, often as soon as the sun begins to bake the living room in uncomfortable heat and light. They move to  Peggy’s shadowed, cooler room, and they chat quietly while they drink tea or work or lie back and watch while Peggy makes herself up.

One day, she turns to them before she begins. “Would you like to try?”

Bucky shrugs. “Yeah.”

And so she takes him into the bathroom, and he emerges clean-shaven, and with drops of moisture still clinging to his face. He sits at her desk while she mulls over her choices. 

“On the floor,” she says, and Bucky goes immediately, in an instant cross-legged and leaned forward with his chin out, offering. Peggy gathers an armful of products and sits across from him.

She massages a cream into his face first. Bucky’s face goes lax and quiet with her thumbs rubbing into his freshly shaven cheeks. She continues: pats concealer under his eyes, sweeps a russet shadow across his lids. Lines his eyes with a creamy brown pencil, brushes through his lashes with mascara. A sweep of blush brings color into his face, makes him look shy. 

She puts lipstick on him, first applying a brush to the tube of lipstick, then the brush to Bucky’s lips. She leans close, rests her other hand at the nape of his neck, holding his head tilted up, and laser-focused on his mouth. Bucky’s eyes slit open, and Steve feels sure one of them is about to lean forward and kiss the other. Bucky’s long eyelashes sweep downward, across his cheeks, as he watches her. 

She leans back, finished. Peggy’s lips part, and she says nothing for a moment. Bucky remains still, his chin still tilted towards her, his eyes doting. She tries again, opens her mouth, and says, 

“We’re losing ground at the firm.”

Bucky blinks once, twice, and emerges as if from a trance. Seeing Bucky shake himself back into consciousness, Steve allows himself to surface too. Remembers piece by piece the complex world that exists outside this room. 

Steve knows they’re losing ground. He’s been ignoring it, enjoying his weekends far too much, and chugging through the work, pretending that their handful of decisive wins are enough to keep them in the partners’ good graces. Their work is damn good, Steve would be the first to say, but they are not putting away nearly as many hours as they used to, nor picking up as many paying clients. They leave earlier than any other attorney, conspicuously early, and they spend long hours at the volunteer clinic every Friday. The men aren’t just catching up, they’re overtaking them. 

“What do we do?” Steve asks, when he gets his mouth to work again.

Peggy clicks her tongue, exasperated, and looks like she’s going to shrug. 

Bucky smacks his lips a couple times, testing, then says simply, “You know what to do.”

She and Bucky share an intense, sustained look, Peggy’s face sallow and tired, Bucky’s now fresh and bright. 

“I do,” Peggy says.

Steve swallows convulsively, eyebrows furrowed. He wonders when they had the chance to talk about this, why they didn’t want to include him.

Eventually, Peggy turns from Bucky to Steve. “Steve,” she says cautiously, “how do you feel about starting our own firm?”

Steve— Steve is floored. His body seems to lock in place as he devotes all his energy to unpacking Peggy’s suggestion. Their own firm. 

“We won’t start right away,” she tacks on. “And it might be a poor decision. Once we start, we will have to do a lot of work up front—a  _ lot _ of work—for limited compensation, particularly at first. Well, you might earn more than before. If you’re willing, I’d like to get you paralegal training. Though that might happen regardless, if I can get the firm to approve it. Ideally, before we leave you’d have time to become a notary as well, and while you’re earning your certifications we’d start to pull clients from our current firm, like the Durhams, who love you more than they love their own son. I have enough saved to begin this venture responsibly, but then again—”

“Peggy.”

“Yes?”

“Of  _ course  _ I want to start a firm with you,” he says, and delights at the smile that spreads across her face. She places a hand on his cheek; he leans into it. 

Bucky’s hand lands roughly in Steve’s hair, and he pulls him into a one-armed hug. “My little seditionists,” he says, his other arm going around Peggy’s shoulders. Peggy snorts, but allows herself to be pulled into the hug.

\---

For the next three months, the pace picks up again. Dawn to dusk, day after day, they do nothing but work, on their current cases, on their new firm, on greasing up clients and getting proper certifications. Bucky gets conscripted early on, just to help with research at first, or maybe to take a potential client to lunch, and then later actual work: registering an email domain, setting up a phone line, and, eventually, creating their website.

“What’s the going rate?” Peggy asks, still leaned over Bucky’s shoulder after demanding a rehaul of the layout. “I know how long this must have taken you.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Bucky mumbles, still furiously typing up Peggy’s comments. 

Sitting across the room at Peggy’s desk, Steve snorts.

Peggy steps back to look down sharply at Bucky. “James,” she says.

“On the house.”

She gives him a withering look. 

He stops typing, brings his hands behind his head as he tilts back in his chair, face easing into a smirk. The back of his chair  _ clinks _ as it hits Peggy’s office window. He cuts a dark silhouette out of the shimmering city lights below. Smooth as cream, he says, “We’re about to head out, right? Let’s go out. Buy me a beer or two and we’ll call it even.” 

Ah, Steve thinks, Bucky’s patented subtlety-is-for-wimps strategy. Steve had wondered if it would make an appearance for Peggy. Steve looks to Peggy, wondering how she’ll take it.

Peggy squints at Bucky. “Fine,” she finally says, and hooks her purse decisively over her shoulder. “Let’s get on with it.”

As Peggy marches to the door, Steve can’t tell whether Bucky succeeded or failed. Bucky, though, elbows optimistically into his jacket and opens the door for her, bowing grandly. He smiles at her scoff on her way out. Then, at the last moment, he glances over his shoulder. “You coming?”

Steve startles. Bucky wants him to come along? Wasn’t he coming onto her? “Uh, well,” Steve stammers. “Don’t want to kill your ‘mojo.’” 

“What’s the use of mojo without my best man there?” he asks, leaning against the doorframe now, shoulders pulled back, chest invitingly broad.

Too dazed to argue the point, Steve allows Bucky to lead him out the door.

Peggy’s eyes dart up when the two of them catch up to her. Steve expects her to object, or at least show some kind of surprise, but she simply says, “Come along,” and continues her brisk pace forward.


	8. Chapter 8

Peggy and Steve stride into a meeting one muggy Monday morning, and Hoffman, looking quite convincingly distraught, spins his laptop around so the screen faces them. On his screen, he has open the unfinished website for their new firm. Steve glances up in shock. How’d Hoffman, the idiot, figure this out on his own?

“What is this?” Hoffman asks breathlessly. 

Despite Steve’s racing heart rate and rapidly paling face, Steve has the presence of mind to roll his eyes.

One of the partners leans forward with a severe glance at Steve and Peggy. “What is it?” the partner demands.

And so Steve and Peggy leave the firm, suddenly, unexpectedly. But they’ve been saving up, and they’re nearly ready. They have a few clients secured and Steve has registered to take his paralegal examination. They have a few months of waiting ahead of them, to get their paperwork in order and find an office space. In the meantime, they’re scouting locations, hosting lunches, and clocking hours at the free clinic. 

But really, there’s not much to do for a while, and so they take it easy. They follow a lazy, sprawling spring into summer, allowing themselves to take half-days or long weekends while they work towards their firm. 

Through clients, Peggy knows quite a few people who run well-known art galleries, and together they attend a few bougie debut shows. Steve and Bucky feel their hackles rise as attendants fit flutes of champagne into their empty hands, and they share a commiserating wince as Peggy seriously considers buying a $10,000 painting. 

Afterwards, Steve takes Peggy and Bucky to his friends’ art showings, where the floors are dirty, the alcohol comes in tin cans, and the art is sprawling across the walls, installations filling every corner. Peggy seems pleased. She spends almost an hour with an interactive sculpture, palms hovering over a panel of LED lights on the wall, while Bucky and Steve slouch in the corner and catch up with a couple of old friends from Brooklyn. 

“That was lovely,” she says to Steve as they go, still looking longingly after the sculpture. She takes his hand, kisses his knuckles. “Thank you.”

Steve blushes. “No problem.”

Bucky gets slammed with work over the next week, nothing Steve and Peggy can help with, and so they go and sit in on a less significant Supreme Court hearing, just for fun. Steve feels a mix of awe and boredom, while a complicated series of emotions flit over Peggy’s face. When it’s over, they sit in a cafe across the street and talk through their impressions, Peggy circling an ambivalence she can’t quite pin down. 

“I didn’t not like it,” she concludes.

Over the next week, Steve writes a think piece about the experience, trying to pin down the unease Peggy felt, hoping someone else will relate. He quotes Peggy gratuitously, not caring if anyone will pick it up for publication.

A scandal hits the evening news cycle, some red-head, a suspected Russian spy, on the run after reportedly stealing classified information. Peggy usually likes to let the TV rattling on in the background while she works, but Peggy’s eyes are glued to the TV for the entire segment. 

“When I was young, I always thought I’d be a spy,” she confides. 

Bucky takes them both to the spy museum. They all choose secret identities at the beginning, Peggy eager to try on an Australian accent, and Bucky eager to try on Peggy’s. Steve puts on the demeanor of an old money attorney that makes Peggy snort with laughter. They decide they all must go undercover as outrageous flirts, in true super-spy style. Mostly, this involves a lot of innuendo on Steve’s side, copious touching from Bucky, and howling laughter from Peggy as she tries her best to maintain her composure and her awful, awful accent.

Much of the museum, they find, is built for humans much smaller than them, but the three of them are more than capable of amusing themselves.

After they exhaust the interesting museums and parks and galleries, Steve, Peggy, and Bucky start spending their weekends at flea markets, where they talk each other into and out of buying ceramic horse figurines and ostentatious glass candle holders. At the street fairs after sundown they play rigged carnival games and consume, as Peggy describes them, “a strange assortment of food items offered on sticks.” As they wander down the aisles of stalls, Steve realizes that Peggy knows almost no one in D.C.--not counting the rich and powerful--and Peggy finds out that Steve and Bucky know  _ everyone _ .

“They can’t all possibly be  _ friends _ of yours,” Peggy insists.

“Why not?” Bucky asks. Then, seeing the grocer from the corner market in his and Steve’s neighborhood, he nods and goes, “Hey Jeff.”

Jeff waves back eagerly.

Peggy shakes her head, and mutters something that sounds suspiciously like “Americans...”

As the wet heat of summer begins to settle in, Bucky, finally, gets them to come to Shakespeare in the park with him. They sit on a rocky grass field late into the evening, Steve lying beside Bucky and wondering all the while who is meant to kiss whom at this particular play. But the air grows too humid as the play lumbers on, one of the less murder-y tragedies, so they wander off before the final act and Steve never gets to find out. 

They marinate in an air-conditioned 7-11, and Bucky buys a huge Slurpee for them to share. The manager kicks them out after Bucky tops up their Slurpee one too many times, so they go out to the street corner and clamber up to sit on the ledge of an old bronze statue. They sit with their backs leaned against the cool, metal legs of a galloping horse. They kick their feet in the dark, fan their faces with their hands and let the syrup-sweet slush sooth their throats.

On the Fourth of July, they go to watch the fireworks from the roof of Steve and Bucky’s apartment building, where a dozen other people have gathered in clusters, huddled with their shoulders bumping up against each other. 

Steve, Peggy, and Bucky lie out on a blanket, looking up at the plumes of white smoke, like frayed cotton against the night sky. They speak quietly so as not to disturb the others, so as not to be heard. They have already eaten Steve’s birthday cake and drunk most of the champagne, leaving their hands sticky with dried sugar. The last firework went off long minutes ago, and the neighbors filter slowly back down to their rooms, until it’s just the three of them on the roof in the dark. Bucky plays with his lighter, allowing wavering flame to lick across his face.

Even though night has settled in, it’s balmy, hot, humid; sweat sticks their clothes to their bodies, their hair to their necks. Peggy leans up over the two of them, looking slightly fuzzy from champagne. Bucky leans up too. Steve stays where he is, flat on the ground between them. He finds he doesn’t mind their shadowed, looming faces.

Peggy, biting her thumbnail, says to Bucky, “You should kiss him.”

Steve giggles. There’s gravel and dust in Bucky’s hair, and his face is creased with a dopey smile. Steve thinks about it, kissing Bucky, and he laughs a little harder. He’s possibly a bit drunk. Bucky laughs too. Then, to Steve’s surprise, Bucky leans forward, presses his lips over the laughter bubbling out of Steve’s throat. His breath is a shock against Steve’s overheated skin, and his mouth, Steve finds, tastes faintly like icing.

“Wow,” Steve sighs when Bucky pulls back, his lips gone pink and shiny. Bucky’s eyelashes flutter up as he looks up at Peggy for direction, and instantly she draws him forward with a hand behind his head, fingers curled into the hair at the nape of his neck. Her mouth meets his just inches above Steve. Their kiss is sweet, simple, more affection than hunger, and not at all how Steve had been guiltily imagining it, night after night these past weeks.

“Wow,” Steve says again. 

Peggy pulls off Bucky’s mouth with a wet  _ smack _ , and Bucky stutters forward after her. 

“You two have never...” Peggy asks, looking hungrily between the two of them.

Steve shakes his head. 

“Would you like to?”

Bucky’s expression shutters a bit, and he rolls his head onto his shoulder to cast a glance at Steve. 

Steve processes this; his head feels stuffed full from the champagne, and the fullness sets a soothing fog over the scene before him. Bucky has a smudge of lipstick across his lower lip, just a blush of color across his soft mouth. He’s wearing cologne, Steve suddenly realizes. Flyaways flick out from Peggy’s lazily pulled back hair, and the print of her mascara is stamped onto her lower lid. They’re so lovely, his best friends. He can’t believe he’s allowed to— to do something like this. 

“Yeah. I’d like to,” he affirms.

Peggy smiles, Bucky smiles, and the warmth in Steve’s chest burns sweeter. 

Peggy leads them down the stairwell, her hand a light cuff around Bucky’s wrist. Bucky keeps shooting nervous glances back at Steve, as if to check he hasn’t gotten lost. Steve laughs a little. He’s not  _ that _ drunk. Bucky laughs back.

Steve has been to Bucky’s bedroom a thousand and one times; he knows the computer set up and the laundry piles and the stack of creased paperbacks atop his dresser, but he’s never seen Bucky slink between the dresser and the laundry pile with a swagger that’s half arrogance and half nerves, and he’s never seen Bucky turn that swagger on Steve. Steve’s head clears enough for him to feel a spike of anxiety in his chest.

“Lie down, darling,” Peggy says, and with one hand to Steve’s chest, she nudges him until he is lying back on the bed, propped up on his elbows. With a flick of her eyes, she sends Bucky to sit on the edge of the mattress too.

Peggy pulls her top off immediately, with little fanfare, and Steve bites his lip. The dip between her breasts looks exquisitely soft. He wants to know how it would feel against his lips. Bucky’s hand twitches, like he’s torn between playing it cool and lunging forward.

Peggy places a hand on Bucky’s shoulder, slides onto the mattress on her knees. “You’ll tell me if we start to do something you don’t like?” she says to Steve, to Bucky.

Steve nods.

“Say it back to me dear,” she says gently.

“I’ll tell you,” Steve says.

She turns to Bucky.

“Yeah,” he says. 

They hold eye contact for a while, and then Peggy seems to accept it. She lays her hands against the flat of Steve’s stomach, inching his shirt up to reveal a sliver of skin. She raises an eyebrow at him. He nods. Her hands smooth around his waist, across his torso, as she pulls the shirt up, fingers then brushing past his shoulders and arms, leaving his chest bare and cold and tingling in the wake of her touch.

He moves his hand tentatively to her shoulder, hooks a finger under her bra strap. “May I?”

“Please do,” Peggy says.

When he moves the strap aside, there’s a pink line imprinted on her skin, and, when he removes her bra entirely, there’s another running around her torso, where the underwear couldn’t quite contain her. He traces it with his finger and Peggy shudders. Testing, he places his lips against the line on her shoulder. Traces lower, inwards, and she sighs, opening up, encouraging him towards her breast with a hand in his hair. 

When Steve pulls off, he finds Bucky staring, pupils blown wide. 

“You—” Steve’s voice cuts off, hoarse. “You gonna keep your shirt on for this?” he asks Bucky, teasing.

Bucky wrangles his pink-faced lust under control and slips into a confident smirk. He leans back, inviting. 

“What’cha gonna do about it?” he teases.

Steve licks his lips. He spreads his hands over Bucky’s pecs, can feel Bucky’s heartbeat hammering under his worn flannel. They share a quiet, nervous smile. Steve’s slim fingers make quick work of the buttons going down Bucky’s shirt. Steve runs his hands down the curves of Bucky’s arms, pushes Bucky’s sleeves down to his wrists.

Shirt finally off, Bucky rests the pad of his thumb on Steve’s cheek, soft. Steve turns, kisses his palm.

“Pants,” Peggy says, stripping out of her skirt and underwear in a rush. 

Bucky follows suit with a showy cockiness, flipping his belt buckle open, taking his time to shimmy out of his jeans, then his boxers. Steve begins as well, but his fingers move slowly with his eyes focused either on the crease between Peggy’s stomach and thigh or on the long lines of Bucky’s legs. Impatient, Peggy steps in to help Steve. She pulls his pants off in a single efficient yank and lets them soar off the edge of the bed. 

That done, she returns to the bed to lie horizontally across Steve’s legs. She has such intelligent eyes, and now she looks at him, that intelligence layered on top of lust and more, and heat blooms beneath Steve’s skin. He surges forward, kisses her finally, overeager and clumsy after the long wait, and she laughs into his mouth. 

She breaks off, her hand rubbing circles into Steve’s thigh, and then she reaches out, says, “James, darling,” and gestures him onto the bed. He crawls on the bed over Peggy, presses a kiss into the small of her back, then presses a second kiss into her shoulder with his eyes focused on Steve.

“Hey Stevie,” Bucky breathes. 

“Buck,” Steve pleads.

Bucky places his palm on Steve’s stomach. “You good?”

“So good.”

Peggy’s eyes crease with a small smile.

“Good, good” Bucky says, his hand drifting lower. He grins. “It only gets better from here.”

“You cornball,” Steve says, before he breaks off in a gasp as Bucky’s hand wraps around him, and  _ god _ is Bucky right.


	9. Chapter 9

The three of them… go out. Steve, Peggy, and Bucky; sitting in three out of four bar stools at a bar too trendy to have proper seating; or occupying a table for four at an upscale restaurant, where the host glares at their empty seat; or unable to decide whether they should buy one or two bottles of wine for three people. 

“Just saying,” Bucky notes, “six-packs were  _ made _ for threes.”

Steve don’t mind the empty seats, or the occasional glares, or even the cheap beer they end up growing accustomed to. It’s nice to be out with them, to see them smile at each other and at him. Steve watches them, Peggy and Bucky, and they look  _ so good _ standing around together, Bucky’s scruffy chin resting on the shoulder of Peggy’s blazer, his powerful arms wrapped around her waist. Or in bed, Peggy’s legs hooked over Bucky’s shoulders, Bucky’s pale fingers pressed into the meat of her thigh.

Another thing Steve doesn’t mind: getting laid regularly, with people he lo— people he trusts. People he knows. Whatever. 

Whenever he’s in bed with them, in Peggy’s or in Bucky’s room (or, on one memorable occasion, squeezed onto Steve’s twin mattress), whenever their skin is on his and his lips are on theirs, and whenever Steve’s exhales come out as high and reedy moans, Steve thinks,  _ this is it _ . 

He burrows into them after, dozing with his arms and legs tangled between theirs a satisfied knot, until  they have to break apart or risk staining the sheets with sweat. 

Steve finds himself washing the sheets quite often, nowadays, and it’s then, in the aftermath, when he’s sitting alone in the laundry room below his apartment building with a handful quarters weighing down his pocket and a row of washers rattling against the wall, it’s then that Steve worries.

They must be dating. He’s sure. 

Or he’s not sure, really. It’s something like dating, something that to some extent does or does not involve him. He… he should ask, but he’s afraid asking will upset the delicate balance they have worked out. They’ve skirted the topic a few times, but he sees the panic in Bucky’s eyes and feels the pit of anxiety in his gut and he panics, changes the subject. 

When he thinks about it rationally—that is, when he thinks about it without the distraction of Bucky’s soft mouth or Peggy’s shark-like grin—he feels fairly certain they’ll break off into their own twosome some day. In his nobler moments, Steve thinks he ought to break it off with them and save everyone the trouble. But realistically, that is, selfishly, he wants to keep spending time with them for as long as possible. He likes seeing Peggy and Bucky first thing in the morning, and he likes going out with them at night, and he likes thinking of them liking it too.

So he doesn’t ask. 

Bucky comes back to the apartment after being out with Peggy one night, and he’s glowing. Loose and smiley, Bucky wanders up to Steve and traces dopey patterns into Steve’s hair, unable to sustain a conversation. Steve shakes him off, cranes his neck to peer at his easy grin. Steve’s never quite seen him like this. He wonders about what the two of them got up to without him. 

Peggy, too, coming into their newly leased office after running an errand with Bucky, is girlish and pleased under Bucky’s attention. She’s not embarrassed about it either, doesn’t even drop the act once she’s back around Steve, still subtly preening at Steve’s compliments and riffing off his snarky comments.

Steve tries to throw himself into his work to distract himself from the confusion, the want. And it works—his exam is coming up and he has articles to write and there’s finally a case to prep; he needs to be alone for long periods of time so he can go over his notes, or so he can interview folks and string articles together. Summer is edging into fall, and there is work to be done. So, out of stress or exhaustion or an indistinct sense of dread, he declines a few group outings. Perhaps a few more than necessary. On more than one occasion when Peggy and Bucky are out together, he finds himself simply reading or sketching or pacing without purpose, fitful. 

There’s a park near the new office, and, when the folks in the office on the floor above them start stomping their feet around or using strange machinery, Peggy often takes breaks to wander around the perimeter of the lake there. She asks Steve to join her one evening when Bucky’s out on an IT job, so it’s just the two of them working through the thunder from above, and they spend the evening walking slowly, talking haltingly.  

She takes Steve’s hand partway through the walk, as if it just occurred to her that she could do that. The evening air is cool and pleasant, but their conversation falls to heavy silence quickly. They’re halfway through their second impossibly awkward lap when she finally asks, “How are things between you and James lately?” There’s something hesitant about the way she approaches the question, and Steve can’t figure out what it is. The dread in his chest spreads.

Steve shrugs. “Same as ever. Honestly, I thought it’d get weird but… it feels natural. Feels like this—” whatever  _ this  _ is, “—was meant to happen.”

“Yes,” Peggy says quickly, eyebrows furrowed. “Good. We ought to— ought to talk.”

“We talk all the time,” Steve says, baffled. 

After over eighteen months of reading Peggy’s microexpressions, Steve finds himself unable to parse her expression now. She’s uncomfortable, clear enough, but why? Is it the general unpleasantness of the whole evening, or did he say something? 

Peggy begs off the rest of the walk, claiming a desire for caffeine, and she walks speedily, gracelessly in the direction of the nearest cafe.

Steve can’t make heads or tails of it.

He tries to broach the topic with Bucky, to see if he knows, but Bucky is uncharacteristically enigmatic about Peggy, now. “She’s some gal,” he says several times, which is true, but not helpful.

They’re at Peggy’s house later that week, and it should be normal. Steve and Peggy cooked, some easy pasta dish, buttery and steaming in the center of the table. Steve’s hands still smell like garlic. Peggy’s too, probably. Bucky comes in gnawing at the top of a beer bottle, trying to crack it open with his teeth. Peggy laughs, then silence fills the room.

Steve’s about made up his mind to break it off with them, just to spare them all the discomfort, when Peggy cuts in. 

“We should start already,” she says, nonsensically.

Bucky makes an attempt at a word before his throat closes up. His eyes are wide.

“Don’t give me that look, James,” she says, smooth, but her face is tense now too. She pauses. 

Steve sighs, damn tired of feeling like the two of them are conspiring without him.

A silence stretches out. Then, Peggy says with sudden energy, “We need to be up and running well before New Year's.” Projecting a mix of disdain and glee, she adds, “So many holiday disputes to settle.”

Steve narrows his eyes. 

“Wh— I mean, we’re ready?” Bucky asks, ducking his chin into his chest. 

“...Yes,” Steve says cautiously. “Of course we are.” 

Bucky thumbs the cap of his beer with his blunt nail, not making eye contact.

It’s nearly September, four months after they left the firm. And they’re ready: they’ve got their office lease secured, Steve’s gotten his certifications, and they have their first clients lined up.  They’ve been fucking around, more or less, biding their time and seeing as much of each other as possible before they start working dawn to dawn again. 

But now they’re here, stiff and unhappy, and there’s really no reason to wait. 

They set a start date, and the distraction seems to jolt life back into them. For a week leading up to the date, they futz around the office, moving plants here and there to hide water stains, visiting secondhand shops for last-minute furniture additions, sorting stationery and preparing client binders, and trying to muffle the sounds coming from their damn ceiling. 

The night before their official first day, they finally get together, all three of them at once in Peggy’s new office, Steve with his back against the desk, Peggy reclined on the old loveseat pushed against the wall, and Bucky on the coffee table, his back against the window overlooking a five-lane intersection. It’s nearly 9 PM, and traffic has died down enough that they only hear the echoes of the occasional honk. Peggy slides styrofoam takeout containers to each of them, while Bucky props his laptop up on Peggy’s desk. 

“Come on, buddy,” Bucky says to Steve, jerking his head towards the loveseat. 

They squeeze in together, Bucky’s legs across both their laps and his ass digging into Steve’s thigh. They settle on watching  _ Breath of the Wild _ playthroughs and while they watch they talk, quietly, easily. No one makes any move to leave the couch when they start to droop, and they end up passing out huddled together.

Maybe they’re fine after all, Steve thinks as he’s falling asleep, maybe it’ll work out.


	10. Chapter 10

Work kicks up again, and Steve finds himself back on a nine-to-nine schedule. Most days, he’s hunched over his laptop nine hours of the day, and meeting with clients the other three. Sometimes he’ll devote half an hour to a fitful nap, at Peggy’s insistence, but mostly he’s nose to the grindstone. By the time Bucky comes to pick him up in the evenings, he’s drooping at his desk, and his car-sleeping habit evolves into a full blown reflex, to the point that just hearing the ignition turn sends his eyelids fluttering.

“I’m fine,” he tells Bucky and Peggy both, when, over a midnight dinner at Peggy’s apartment sometime in their second week, Bucky makes a suspiciously offhand comment about the greyness below Steve’s eyes. “It’s not like before.”

And it’s not. So far, there’s no one to watch out for at the new office, and they stay late not out of fear, but out of an honest desire to continue working. Bucky thinks their hours are “fucking bonkers,” but Steve and Peggy are happy to spend their evenings wading through paperwork on the floor of Peggy’s office with a BBC drama playing in the background. Several nights in a row, Peggy has a major breakthrough between 8 and 9 PM, which Bucky takes to calling the witching hour. Steve insists that the name is a complete non sequitur, to which Bucky happily replies, “Fuck off.”

After work, they converge on Peggy’s apartment again more often than not, and, now that the awkwardness has passed, Steve doesn’t see why they shouldn’t. The apartment is far closer to their new office. And it has better water pressure. 

They’re at Peggy’s apartment, maybe a month in, and Steve must look particularly worn, because after a brief glance, Peggy shuttles him into her master bath and seats him on the rim of the bathtub. “But won’t you—?” he begins to ask, but Peggy has already shut the door on him. 

He sits on the rim of the tub, leans against the cool ceramic tiles. And, next thing he knows, he’s on the ground, and the entire left side of his body stings something fierce.

Footsteps. The door swings open. “Steve? Are you—” Peggy asks. Her head tilts to the side. “Did you fall asleep while undressing?”

Steve looks down. One of his sleeves has been pushed off his shoulder. “I guess?” he says blearily.

“Darling,” Peggy laughs, coming around to his side. “If you need help with something, ask.” She gets her arms around him and lifts him to his feet. “Let’s get you to bed,” she says, and pecks the top of his head.

“Mmm,” Steve agrees.

He allows her to maneuver his arms and legs out of his clothes and into a luxurious lavender bathrobe, and in response to a light pressure at his back, he begins shuffling his feet in the direction of the bedroom. There’s something beneath him, then, and Peggy pulls a curtain over him, and then his eyes are closed and there’s a kiss placed above his eyebrow and he’s dead to the world.

\---

He wakes up in Peggy’s room, mortified.

“Oh god,” he says, pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes. “Oh  _ god _ .”

“Oh, calm down,” Peggy’s voice demands from the corner of the room. “Worse things have happened.”

He thumps his arms against the mattress, folding the blanket back as he does. Peggy’s at her desk, and the other side of the bed is rumpled. Did he sleep with her in her own bed and not even notice? If Steve was so tired that he  _ missed something _ — 

He’s got to get better at staying conscious.

\---

After a brief stop for drinks at Peggy’s new favorite watering hole, the next night starts the same: at Peggy’s apartment, where Steve tries to hide his exhaustion from Bucky and Peggy. Steve got a full five hours of sleep the night before, but he’s still just as tired when Peggy deposits him in the bathroom and says something like, “Our office is too small for you to have an odor.”

The door shuts behind her again and, this time, Steve has a game plan: don’t sit down. If he’s not seated, he can’t fall asleep. So instead, he wavers in the middle of the room, works his heavy arms out of his jacket, and thinks about how comfortable he’d be, sitting on the cool, smooth edge of the tub— 

The doorknob turns as Steve is about to sit, and he freezes, feeling for a second like he’s been caught red-handed, but it’s only Bucky.

“Hey. Heard you had trouble last night,” he says, wry. “Mind if I keep an eye?”

Steve nods.

“You can go ahead—” Bucky says, gesturing to Steve’s half-seated squat over the tub.

Steve sits, embarrassed. His fingers are uncoordinated as he tries to work small, clear buttons out of the thin little slivers in his shirt. Buttons, he decides, are passé. He blinks hard, trying to focus on the buttonhole pinched between his fingers.

Then, Bucky’s hand is beneath his chin and Steve’s jerking forward, away from cold tile digging into his spine.

“You nodded off,” Bucky explains. 

Steve’s cheeks burn. 

“Let me help.”

He nudges Steve back against the shower wall, then goes to his knees before him. With careful hands, he loosens Steve’s forgotten tie, then, with uncanny speed, undoes each button going down Steve’s torso. At Steve’s belt buckle, Bucky’s eyes flick up, and Steve, suddenly quite awake, holds his breath. Bucky continues. The buckle is absurdly loud as Bucky loosens it, and with each tug to pull the belt through the loops, he pulls Steve’s hips forward too.

“Aren’t you going to…” Steve asks, gesturing to Bucky’s clothed form.

Bucky raises an eyebrow. “I could,” he says.

Steve hums, tilts his chin up,  _ go ahead _ .

Bucky stays on his knees before Steve, and with one hand, yanks his shirt over his head. Steve twines his fingers into Bucky’s mussed up hair. It’s soft, and smells like coconut.

Bucky’s eyes flick to Steve’s zipper. Steve’s been half-hard since bucky went to his knees, but now it feels urgent. Steve loosens his hand in Bucky’s hair to allow him to move forward. And Bucky does, tugs the zipper down, cajoles Steve into lifting his hips so Bucky can pull his pants free. The tub is shockingly cold against Steve’s bare ass, and Steve hisses.

“Let’s get the water going,” Bucky says. “It’ll warm you up.”

“All right,” Steve mumbles, though the thought of moving reminds him how  _ tired  _ he is, “but you can’t jack me off in my own bath water.”

Bucky splutters. “Smartass,” he says. He reaches past Steve to turn the faucet on, his hair tickling past Steve’s ear. Then, Bucky crashes back to his knees, eagerly hooks one of Steve’s legs over his shoulder. “Okay?” he asks.

“Yes.”

Bucky grins, and with little preamble, takes Steve into his mouth. Steve gasps, and his overworked mind races to process everything at once, the pounding rush of water behind him, the stifling press of steam against his bare skin, and the soft, wet heat of Bucky’s mouth on him. Feeling unmoored, Steve finds himself gripping Bucky’s hair, pressing the pads of his fingers into Bucky’s scalp. Blood pulses beneath Steve’s skin, his breaths come faster and faster, and then Bucky’s hand splays across Steve’s ribs, seeking his nipple, and with one clumsy brush of Bucky’s fingers, Steve comes, a sudden flash of shuddering pleasure.

When they stumble out of the bathroom pink-skinned and clean, Peggy is in bed, nose buried in a book, smirking.

The seal is broken, and they go back to how they were before. Touching and laughing and fucking and blushing every hour they’re not at work (and nearly one hour when they are at work). Steve spends long weeks blissful once again. They never talk about it, but now he’s fairly sure, it’s always been the three of them. If he’s happy and they’re happy, then there’s no need to talk it over, right?


	11. Chapter 11

Steve’s alone in the office for once, which for him means sitting on the kitchen counter and eating peanut butter out of the jar while the printer at his elbow chugs out 300-page contracts in triplicate. From above him come the muffled sounds of loud conversation and clanking machinery. He tries half-heartedly to drown out the screech of the printer and the clammer of the upstairs office by smacking his mouth louder and louder around ever larger spoonfuls of peanut butter. 

But even that gets boring after a while, so he hops off the counter, peanut butter tucked in the crook of his elbow, and begins wandering their little office looking for something to distract him while he waits for the paperwork. The towering bookshelf in Peggy’s office catches his eye. He does always need to build his foundational knowledge, even if it’s monotonous work. He stalls beside the frosted glass window.

With a peanut buttery sigh, he swings into the room and begins to peruse Peggy’s selection. He settles on reading the thickest, driest looking text on the shelf. “In for a penny…” he mutters to himself. 

The squat book comes free in his hand, and something that was resting on top or beside it clatters down as well. It lands on the floor, something quite familiar. Something that Steve’s rifled pas a hundred times, while looking through the box under Bucky’s bed for something Bucky forgot at home, a USB drive or a tie or a notebook. It looks like Bucky’s old ring box, the deep navy velvet faded and patchy, sitting on the carpeted floor. 

The peanut butter sits heavy in his stomach now. He swallows against the oily residue in his throat. Peggy and Bucky go out without him, Steve knows, and they whisper to each other and share meaningful looks and go on mysterious errands, but had they progressed to rings without mentioning it? Steve had been there every step of the way, and he’d thought… 

Steve reaches for the ring box, numb. He presses his thumb to the lid it snaps open. Bucky’s ring. What else? 

The doorknob turns. Steve’s head snaps up. Peggy’s silhouette is in the window. In a panic, Steve jams the box into his pocket. Peggy barely registers him standing at her desk. She says, “Oh! Hello,” drops her bag on the floor, and adds, “Hold on a moment,” before ducking back out of the door. Her steps echo down the hall, and the faucet turns on with a rush of water.

Steve dashes back to his desk, heart pounding, fingers wrapped tight around the little velvet box in his pocket. 

“Steve,” Peggy calls back.

Steve, staring resolutely at his laptop and trying to clear his head of any thoughts at all, yells over his shoulder, “Yeah?” His voice is a little mangled. Probably the peanut butter.

“Were you eating peanut butter in my office?” She comes to stand in the hallway, stripping out of her long coat. 

“Yes, ma’am.” He can’t talk to her. The more he speaks the more likely he is to mess everything up, for him, and for Peggy and Bucky, who deserve to be happy despite their secrecy, so he says, “Do you need anything right now?”

“Nothing comes to mind.” She drapes her coat over her arm, moving slowly towards Steve, like she’s approaching an excitable animal. “Are you all right, Steve?”

“Yes, ma’am. If you don’t need anything, I’ll take my lunch break.”

“Yes, of course.”

Steve nods, and barrels past her.

\---

 

He walks through the city, dodging through large groups of tourists, his head empty. Children shriek as they run by, Steve keeps his pace, listens to the sound of his shoes against the concrete. He ends up sitting on the train for a while, bustling off when it gets too crowded, wandering the streets to lose himself in the crowd. When he looks up again, he finds himself at tourist central. Well, since he’s already here…

He goes to the Lincoln Memorial, like he hasn’t since he and Bucky first moved to this town. He sits on the steps and, despite the fall breeze in his hair now, he feels a ghost of the sensation of the first, sweltering summer he and Bucky lived through here. The cool air turns damp and oppressively hot in his throat. He pulls the box out of his pocket. Holds himself still and alone while the sun begins to drop in the sky and the flow of tourists begins to thin. Tries to feel nothing at all. He’s got to get his own feelings out of this whole mess, if he’s going to do right by them.

People pass by him, sometimes a gaggle of strangers will ask him to take a picture, changing their mind when they see his face. He must look ridiculous, sitting before a towering marble statue of Lincoln and moping so aggressively that he repels people. 

Someone stops in front of him. Hoping not to instill despair into another tourist’s heart, Steve looks up with a neutral smile. It’s Peggy, standing straight in her brilliant green dress. The sun setting behind her catches against the hair frizzing out of her head in an orange glow. She sighs, “Steve.”

“How’d you find me?” Steve asks.

“I guessed. It took many attempts.”

“Oh.”

“Steve…”

Steve stands, tired of craning his neck up to look at her. With Steve standing one step above Peggy, he can look directly into her eyes. There’s a smudge of eyeliner building in the corner of her eye. Steve refrains from thumbing it away. Instead, he says, “You don’t have to say anything.”

Her eyebrows furrow. “What?”

“I know.” Steve reveals the ring box in his hands. Peggy’s mouth goes slack. “Yeah,” he adds.

She looks raw and open and… hurt. Steve frowns. That’s not what he wanted. 

Peggy stutters, “We were just trying to find the right time—”

Excuses. Steve cuts her off. “Look it’s okay. I just— I wish you told me.” He swallows. “I love you.”

“Yes.” She laughs a wet laugh. “I know. Steve, you must know I love you too.”

He grits his teeth. “You don’t have to say that.”

“Steve—”

Again, he jumps in, “No, come on, I know how these things go. You and Bucky— it makes sense. I don’t need to be there for—”

Peggy interrupts, “You don’t want to or you don’t need to?”

Steve’s breath is ragged when he inhales. “Come on Peg, don’t do this.”

Peggy wavers in place, leaning forward, close enough Steve can smell the coffee on her breath. Steve stares at her lips, inches away from his, a deep, dark red, and he listens to her quiet breaths. A blur of motion in the corner of Steve’s eye catches his attention, and Steve glances to see Bucky sprinting up the steps. 

“Bucky?” he says, and at once Peggy settles back on her feet.

Bucky comes to a stop one step below Peggy, panting. He’s eye-level with them too. It’s weirdly intimate, despite the fact that it means they’re all standing quite apart from each other. 

“What the  _ fuck _ , Steve?” Bucky says, taking in the unshed tears in Peggy’s eyes, Steve’s hard frown.

Steve, already wretchedly unhappy, feels like he’s going to explode. He doesn’t want to be here. So he snaps, “You could’ve told me,” chucks the ring box back at Bucky, and fucks off. 

Steve floats somewhere above his subway seat the whole way home. His conscious mind sees only the speckled pattern below his feet. At his stop, his feet drag him clumsily off the train. He is tugged down the street behind his body like a kite, or perhaps like an anchor, until he collapses into bed and crashes back into himself. 

He remembers, belatedly, that this is Bucky’s apartment too. He wonders if Bucky will come home, or if he’s with Peggy now. He swallows thickly. He’s not sure which he’d prefer. He throws his arm over his eyes, lets the exhaustion he’s built up over the past weeks pull him into unconsciousness.

\---

Bucky doesn’t come home. Steve wants to give him space, and wants space for himself as well, but he can’t help but worry a little. He texts Peggy, awkwardly formal, to make sure he’s with her so he can mope guilt-free.

Her reply is immediate: “Haven’t heard from him. He’s not with you?”

_ Jesus _ , Steve thinks. What a mess.

It takes an hour and a half of fruitless calls before Steve and Peggy decide to meet up outside the metro to head up a search. Steve holds himself so stiffly that, within minutes, his back begins to ache.

“Can we not,” Steve pushes out into the silence, “you know. Talk about it yet?”

Peggy nods. “We’ll wait for James,” she says.

Steve looks down. Not what he meant, but he’ll cross that bridge when he comes to it.

\---

Searching for Bucky almost feels like fieldwork. Steve and Peggy go to their favorite spots, starting with anywhere you can buy food—bars and cafes and burger shacks and food courts. They show the hosts pictures and ask if they’ve seen Bucky.

“Are you cops?” they invariably ask.

“No,” Peggy says, matter of fact. “Just looking for a friend.”

They shrug. “Hope you find him.”

After wandering between their favorite restaurants for a couple hours, Steve’s stomach begins to gnaw itself apart. They’re a block away from the park, approaching a Vietnamese restaurant where the smell of the rich broth, sharp with anise, envelopes them the moment they step within ten feet of the door, and they finally stop to eat. The soup, blissfully hot, is a salve to Steve’s grumpy exhaustion, and he finds himself smiling.

“What is it?” Peggy asks, suspicious. He looks up and sees her fumbling with her rice noodles, which have been sitting so long that they have begun to expand in the broth. 

He laughs outright. At Peggy’s amused head tilt, he adds, “It’s not that. I’m just thinking Bucky’s probably living it up with his other friends, while we’re here stress-eating.”

Peggy quirks a grin. “That is unfortunately quite likely…”

They eat in silence for a while longer, and, without the distraction of conversation or action, Peggy begins to droop over her bowl, her eyes glazing over and her skin dulling. 

Steve puts his hand on hers. “We’ll be okay,” he says, and he finds himself believing it too.

Peggy blinks hard, twice. Clears her throat. “Good,” she finally says, “because I’ve finally met the tenants at the upstairs office, and if I had no one to gossip with I don’t know what I’d do.”

The corner of Steve’s mouth tugs up. “It’d be a real shame.”

\---

They find Bucky shortly after, when they wander the park on a whim. Bucky’s lying in the grass at the park, a blunt pinched between his thumb and forefinger, and a pretty boy lying on his stomach next to him, kicking his feet in the air. After a moment of quiet deliberation, Steve decides they’ll just approach him, straight up. 

“Why give him the chance to run?” Steve says, which makes Peggy scoff.

The pretty boy sees them before Bucky does. Apparently perceiving something off, he places a hand on Bucky’s shoulder and says something to him. Bucky’s head pops up. He says something too. The boy gets to his feet, offers a shy wave, and then jogs away.

Bucky is sprawled out on the grass, watching their approach with an open expression.

“Quit looming,” he says when they finally reach him. “Si'down.”

He takes a deep inhale from the blunt, coughs a bit. Once Steve and Peggy settle in the grass, Bucky lifts it, gesturing,  _ you want? _ Steve takes it, takes two small puffs, measured. He passes the stub to Peggy, who sucks it down to a spot of glowing embers, which she crushes against her bare leg. Bucky whistles.

They sit a little longer, letting their muscles relax and their minds wander.

“Why didn’t you come home?” Steve asks at last.

Bucky turns to lie on his side, props his head up on his fist. “Wasn’t sure I’d be welcome.”

“You’re always welcome,” Steve says. Peggy nods encouragingly at him. Steve looks down at his hands. He adds, “You know I love you.”

Bucky squints at the twist of Steve’s mouth, peers into Steve’s eyes. Then, he laughs. “No I did not fucking know.”

“I kept saying we should  _ talk _ ,” Peggy mutters.

“Yeah, yeah, Peggy’s always right,” Bucky says. He turns to Steve. “You knew though, right?”

“Knew what?” Steve asks

“Why would he know if you didn’t know,” Peggy demands.

Bucky winces. “Thought it was obvious,” he says, then, mumbling so badly Steve can barely understand him, Bucky adds, “I’m head over fuckin’ heels for you.”

Steve’s initial reaction is  _ bullshit _ , but Bucky’s face is relaxed and open, without expectation. Then Steve’s breath catches in his throat as he considers  _ what if _ ? 

Outwardly, Steve shrugs one shoulder. “I thought you were head over heels for her.”

Bucky turns, and his face, impossibly gentle, goes somehow softer at the sight of Peggy. “Her too.”

Peggy flushes. Steve too.

“Will this work?” Peggy blurts, always thinking ten steps ahead.

“Can’t we just do what makes us happy?” Bucky takes their hands. “We can figure this out. We’re smart, attractive, strapping youths.” He glances around. “Well at least I am.”

Steve chokes out a laugh.

Bucky and Peggy both look at each other, holding a silent conversation. Peggy reassuring, Bucky, terrified. Then, they both turn towards Steve. Bucky has something in his hand. Something square, made of a patchy, faded velvet. Bucky’s eyes are creased, and his mouth is stretched and happy, and Steve’s heart is pounding out of his chest. 

Peggy pops the box open, and inside lies the ring. “It’s for us,” Peggy says. She looks to Bucky, then to Steve. 

For us? Steve stills as his mind tries to lay new information over stubborn assumptions, and the longer he sits and thinks, the clearer it becomes, and the redder Peggy’s cheeks go. 

Impatient, anxious, Peggy continues, “We’re sorry we didn’t tell you, honestly, we were trying–”

Steve, somewhere between crying and laughing, cuts her off. He places his hands on either side of her face and pulls her in, kisses her softly on the mouth. He pulls back to press his forehead against hers, threads his fingers through Bucky’s hair. Bucky sniffles.

“Let’s go home,” Steve says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (i don't know how peanut butter works because i'm allergic so someone please tell me if that's jarring)  
> comments and kudos are much appreciated!! :)


End file.
